You don't say whether you get any error messages. I'll take the free guess and assert that the data file isn't being found. You have a hard-coded relative path, meaning the program can only be run from one particular directory.

If you have a single data file in a known location, use an absolute path. If you want to be able to select a data file, accept the name from the command line.

A design note: you should consider the effect of storing the namelist in a global array. Should new take the file name in the constructor, keeping the name list as instance data?

Added: Also, the commented-out open to write suggests that you may have clobbered your name file.