I wrote a small bash script to help solve this problem. You feed the script an index number representing the order in which the devices appear in the vmware console and the script responds with the name of the device that corresponds with that index number. If I find any problems with it I'll keep a gist updated here: https://gist.github.com/logicalmethods/da1d89f8cfcfd58ad365e6ea98461f16
#! /bin/bash
###
# Written by Alex Speaks
# Takes the position in which a NIC appears in the vmware console and returns the ethernet device that corresponds to that position.
# Position numbers start at 0
# You can think of this as the old-style ethX number
NIC_INDEX=$1
for dir in /sys/bus/pci/devices/*/
do
if [ -f $dir/label ] && [ $(cat ${dir}/label|tr -d '\n') == "Ethernet${NIC_INDEX}" ]
then
ls $dir/net/
fi
done
