Stars are named in several different ways. The brightest stars have proper names that were given thousands of years ago. Sirius and Procyon were named by the ancient Greeks; Betelguese and Aldebaran were named by the Arabics. The origin of star names can be found in the book Star Names; Their Lore and Meaning by Richard Hinckley Allen. It was first published over a century ago and is an excellent reference book. Dimmer stars have been assigned many different names and numbers over the years using many different methods. In 1603, German astronomer Johann Bayer published a celestial atlas, Uranometria. He assigned letters from the Greek alphabet to the stars in each constellation. The brightest star in the constellation would be Alpha, the second Beta, through Omega. There are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet. The complete name would be the Greek letter, the symbol for the Greek letter, and the name of the constellation (in Latin). A new catalog of stars, Atlas Coelestis, written by English astronomer John Flamsteed, was published in 1725. It used equatorial coordinates. A later French edition was published that added numbers to each star. Different catalogs have used different formats for identifying stars. For example, Polaris, the North Star, has many different identities. Sao 308, BS 424, and HD 8890 are just a few from different star catalogs. Struve 93 and ADS 1477 are names from double star catalogs. Alpha Ursae Minoris may be the more familiar-sounding name for the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Bear). Companies that let you name a star for a fee are not official. The name will not be recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), who selects all the official names of all celestial bodies.