View source for Talk:Alioth/@comment-121.210.33.50-20180214025106/@comment-46707274-20200823180323

Alioth was used as a "popular" name for the star prior to the IAU committee deciding to prioritize individual star names over the more "scientific" manner naming them by brightness within a constellation. So they just picked which of the existing names would be the new international official one. The Wikipedia entry is written in such a way that it makes it sound like they came up with a new name entirely while deprioritizing the conslelation system, and should probably be rewritten to show historical uses of that name like it does ones not adopted.