I read in the manual that the voice file generation for your folder and track names requires the rockbox utility to work.... but the rockbox utility won't work with my iPod nano 2nd gen....
This is not completely correct. For creating talk file you don't need to use Rockbox Utility (the wiki has information about that, I don't have links at hand right now). Further, you don't need Rockbox Utility to work with the Nano 2G just to create talk files. You can safely run Rockbox Utility, select a similar player (maybe Nano 1G) manually and just use the talk file creation functionality. However, you can get wrong results if you try to build or install voice files, and (most importantly) this definitely will cause problems if you try to install Rockbox itself using Rockbox Utility. Building of talk files, however, is not bound to player model support by itself.
Alternatively, you can also try a version of Rockbox Utility from current svn. If you can't build yourself I've put binaries online at
http://www.alice-dsl.net/dominik.riebeling/rockbox/ (Windows and OS X). No guarantees, support or whatsoever, but it should work fine, including installation. If you use those binaries I'd be happy to get some feedback in case of problems.