Word 2010 - Is there any way to link/reference text so I don't have to update it everywher

In excel, it's easy to reference a cell to duplicate it. If A1 has an input of 123, I can tell cell A2 to =A1. That's basically what I'm looking to do in Word 2010. I have a document that has multiple locations for the date to be inserted, or multiple locations for a person's name to be inserted. Ideally, I'd like to update the name once and the date once. Then all other locations that have the name or date update automatically. A simple way to do this is the Search and Replace feature, but if there is an easier way that I could link the two, I'd like to set that up. I'm sure there's tons of info on this online, but all of my searches for linking, referencing, etc... produce different results than what I'm looking to accomplish. Any help on this is greatly appreciated.

I appreciate your response and help on this. Unfortunately, updating fields like you proposed is more difficult than using ctrl+h for the search and replace all feature. I figured there was a way to process it dynamically like Excel does, but since there isn't, I'll continue using ctrl+h. Just leaves more room for human error, which I don't like, but it is what it is. Thank you for your help and for clarifying that what I want to do is not possible. That's actually very valuable information knowing it's not possible because it allows me to stop trying to figure out how to do it. Thanks again o/

You're welcome...