why do astronomers commonly name newly discovered planets and stars just strings of xharacters instead of actual words?

Question

why do astronomers commonly name newly discovered planets and stars just strings of xharacters instead of actual words?

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Answer 1

There is an enormous number of stars and most of them have just a number on a catalog not a name.

If you look at the Bonner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durchmusterung from 1859 it is a star catalog made without the aid of photography and it contains 320,000 stars. The [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_Star_Catalog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_Star_Catalog) was made with Hubble Space Telescope constant 945 million stars.

So because of the enormous amount of starts, they are not given individual name but hav a number designation based on where are in a catalog. It would simply be impractical to give them all proper names

There are lots of exoplanets too, 5,017 confirmed as of 1 May 2022. We suspect most stars have them. The result is that they are named after the star with a letter suffix. If the start system only has one start it will be a and the first discovered planet b and so on.

There is a system to give Stars and planets the proper name International Astronomical Union. But it is not done at the rate they are discovered you can see them at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proper_names_of_exoplanets most of the names are from NameExoWorlds where they let the public suggest names for exoplanets. So the naming of them is primary use as a way of public outreach.