Normally, I'd agree with this kind of reasoning (and therefore
wouldn't have posted!) I totally agree that a switch is usually a code
smell (unless you're classifying input data from outside the system,
which I am not here).  However, in this case, I'm not switching on the
tag name - I'm just passing it through to the output.  The behavior is
identical in each case, but the output is a function of the tag name,
hence my desire to use it as a parameter.

If I do create a number of different implementation classes, I'll end
up with an abstract base class with all of the functionality in it,
and a subclass for each taq.  The subclasses will only contain one
overridden method:

protected String getTagName();

Which will return a string literal of the tag name.

Granted, this is not the worst thing in the world, however I was
hoping there was a way to avoid resorting to this kind of boilerplate.

Do you know if there's any other way to use tags inside attributes of
tags that are not jsp actions or tag libraries?

Thanks to both of you.  I've gone down the path of creating an
abstract base class to do the pass through, and then creating a final
concrete subclass if it with just a function returning the tag name
for each actual tag I want to override.