In article ,
"Mike Dworetsky" writes:
The name originated, if memory serves, with radio and infrared astronomers

All radio. In the very early days, radio sources were named
according to the constellation and then in order of brightness.
Sgr A was thus the brightest radio source in Sagittarius.

When better maps came along about 1980, new names were needed. Sgr A
was broken into "Sgr A East," a nonthermal source, and "Sgr A West,"
which turns out to be a collection of H II regions near the Galactic
center.

A different scheme was used for Sgr B: we have Sgr B1 and Sgr B2.
Astronomical nomenclature doesn't always follow set rules, though
things are better now than a generation ago.

who needed to distinguish the galactic central bright object called Sgr A (=
brightest radio source in Sagittarius) and the western patch called Sgr A
West from a later discovery of an unresolved radio and infrared bright spot
within Sgr A, which was called Sgr A*.

The point source was discovered in 1974 (Balick & Brown, ApJ 194,
265). The discovery was based on limited interferometry data. Full
synthesis data came along about five years later. Bob Brown (1982
ApJ 162, 110) made up the name "Sgr A*" for the point source, and the
name stuck. I don't think it's so bad.

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