>>27231475From my limited understanding, the scientists and/or observatories that discover a star get to name them. This used to be a big deal, but now we discover so many stars that most go unnamed, and so the organizations who discover them use it as a way to raise some funding for their work by selling the naming rights. So it's kind of a convention that the discoverers put the names out for sale, and no one else is going to name them because it's already been done. If they aren't purchased for naming, they stay as some letter/number combination, because new stars aren't particularly special anymore (unless there is some crazy property discovered about the star).
