This minor planet was named after Sherburne Wesley Burnham (1838–1921), American astronomer who discovered many visual binary stars and is known for his Burnham Double Star Catalogue (BDS), a catalogue of double stars seen in the Northern Hemisphere, which was published in two parts by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1906. Burnham observed from the Chicago (1877), Lick (1888) and Yerkes (1897) observatories. The was published in the journal Astronomische Nachrichten in 1921 (), and was also mentioned in The Names of the Minor Planets by Paul Herget in 1955 (). The lunar crater Burnham is also named in his honor.
