β Delphini (
Latinised to
Beta Delphini) is the binary's
Bayer designation. The designations of the two components as
Beta Delphini A and
B derive from the convention used by the Washington Multiplicity Catalog (WMC) for
multiple star systems, and adopted by the
International Astronomical Union (IAU). Beta Delphini bore a historical name,
Rotanev, which arose as follows:
Niccolò Cacciatore was the assistant to
Giuseppe Piazzi, and later his successor as Director of the
Palermo Observatory. The name first appeared in Piazzi's Palermo Star Catalogue. When the Catalogue was published in 1814, the unfamiliar names
Sualocin and
Rotanev were attached to
Alpha and
Beta Delphini, respectively. Eventually the Reverend
Thomas Webb, a British astronomer, puzzled out the explanation. Cacciatore's name,
Nicholas Hunter in English translation, would be Latinized to
Nicolaus Venator. Reversing the letters of this construction produces the two names. They have endured, the result of Cacciatore's little practical joke of naming the two after himself. How Webb arrived at this explanation 45 years after the publication of the catalogue is still a mystery. In 2016, the
International Astronomical Union organized a
Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) to catalogue and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN decided to attribute proper names to individual stars rather than entire
multiple systems. It approved the name
Rotanev for the component Beta Delphini A on 12 September 2016 and it is now so included in the List of IAU-approved Star Names. ==Properties==