List posts with the same category name as the page title name

OK… I have a bunch of general pages, then a bunch of posts related to those pages. The posts are in a categories that are named the same as their related Page. What I would like to do is generate a list of the posts on the Page.

I have Pages: “Topic 1” and “Topic 2”. I have categories “Topic 1” (slug: topic-1) and “Topic 2” (slug: topic-2). And I have a bunch of posts with those categories.

I want to list “Topic 1” posts on the “Topic 1” page.

I know I can do this:

<?php query_posts('category_name=topic-1&showposts=10'); ?>
	<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
        <?php the_title(); ?>
	<?php endwhile; ?>

But because I have MANY pages to do like this, I would like to be able to use the same page template for all of them.

So how can I dynamically generate “topic-1” to use in query_posts?

I tried defining a variable by getting the page permalink and then removing the site URL, which would end up being the same as the category slug, something like:

<?php $topic = "the_permalink()";
 $topic2 = substr($topic, 24); ?>

But the_permalink() isn’t generated and so I’m stuck.

I’m just starting with PHP and would really appreciate any help! (If I haven’t been clear enough, let me know.)

Thanks, Christina