Creating Variable Names From Other Variables?

how do I DIM a variable's name using previously declared string varialbes? I have been using PERL for processing data stored in text files but I now have a business need to use VB2008. I would like to do something like this:

dim name1 as string = "ABCD"
dim name2 as string = "123"

'here is the part that I don't know how to do - create a 3rd variable name concatenated from name1 and name2:

dim string.concat({name1,name2}), or maybe use a counter in a line like 'dim namex as string' with x being a counter value.

Essentially I want to dim variables using text strings extracted from a file. In PERL I have declared literals and arrays, such as 'my @$name1', which creates an array named with the contents of $name1. In VB2008 I am not sure how to make this work with the DIM statement.