This minor planet was named by the discoverer in memory of English astronomers Charles Mason (1728–1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733–1779), who observed the 1761 transit of Venus from the Cape of Good Hope. Between 1763 and 1767 they surveyed the so-called Mason–Dixon line, the boundary between the US States of Pennsylvania and Maryland. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on 22 June 1986 ().
