Definitely overcomplicating it. Try this idiom: Think of a hash as a namespace, and its elements as variables within that namespace.

my @array = qw( Larry Curly Moe );

my %stooges;

@stooges{ @array } = ( 0 .. $#array );

print "$_ = $stooges{$_}\n" for keys %stooges;
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Or if you want numbers in the name:

%stooges = map { 'var' . $_ , $array[$_] } 0 .. $#array;
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