Well, first I tried iTunes / Preferences / Store, and turned off "Share details about your library with Apple" - then quit and restarted iTunes. That didn't seem to make a difference; the tracks continued to revert to earlier names.
Then I tried iTunes / Preferences / General, and turned off iCloud Music Library - and that seems to have solved the renaming problem. Of course that's a bit like ripping out the transmission to fix the turn signals, so I'm not particularly happy with this solution.
Note that the files that keep getting renamed aren't even "songs" - they're language lessons bought through an online subscription - so there are no Apple Store tags to match. They just keep going back to a previous save point, as if when you're playing a video game, suddenly for no apparent reason you've jumped back to your previous last-saved point. And then you jump back to it again. And again.