Append Text to Variable Names: Please Help Me Shorten This Code
variableNames[i] = readEE(variableNames[i] + 'Pos');



  Is this possible using C++ / Arduino?


No! Very few programming languages allow that as it requires a lot of run-time information.

Let us instead revisit you issue; Load a large set of variables from EEPROM. What mechanisms do we have in C/C++ and AVR library that could help with this?

Here is a really simple solution that results in a "one-liner"; eeprom_read_block(). 

struct var_t {
  byte fanSpeed, nl1Toggle, ledsToggle;
};
var_t var;
const void* pos = ...;
eeprom_read_block(&amp;var, pos, sizeof(var));


Obviously var_t and var are not very good names (and you will have to come up with something better) and this is for the internal EEPROM but the same technique can be used for the I2C EEPROM. 

Cheers!

BW: What AT24CXXX library are you using? Because this looks strange.

 uint8_t readEE(uint8_t entry) {
   readEEPROM(AT24C32_ADDRESS, 1, entry);
 }


No return statement, etc.