The Common and Coalition apps only have 5 spots available for academic honors, so do I have to use up a spot and put national merit semifinalist even though the names are released publicly?
You don’t have to, but I would. What are the academic honors you would list instead?
I don’t think AOs are going to scour the list to see if a student is a NMSF. They just don’t have the time for that, so if you want them to know you’ll have to list it.
If you want your target schools to know about your NMSF status you should put it on.
I can’t imagine there is a mechanism that a college can use to track the published names with applications and somehow link the two.
Put it on if it is important to you. If you’ve won awards that mean more to you, list those first.