 This minor planet was named on the commemoration of the 300th death anniversary of astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), best known for his laws of planetary motion.Kepler is also honored by a lunar and Martian crater, by "Kepler Dorsum" – a mountain ridge on the Martian moon Phobos, and by Kepler's Supernova.Naming citation was first published in 1930, in the astronomy journal "Astronomical Notes" (AN 240, 135).