Adding entities by their friendly names instead of UID ?

It can be quite cumbersome to select from the long list of entities in the pull-down menu, especially if they show up with UID only instead of friendly names (which is the case in the standard statstics cards). In my case, the UIDs for many sensors by the same manufacturer are almost similar and very long. Is there a way to change the name that the entities are showing up with in the pull-down-menu?