[1] This minor planet was named after Shaka (c.1787–1828), also Chaka or Tchaka, founder and one of the most influential monarchs of the Zulu Kingdom.
[4][12] In October 2013, a rotational lightcurve of Chaka was obtained from photometric observations by Joe Garlitz at his Elgin Observatory.
Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of 25.462±0.001 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.18 magnitude (U=3).
[a] Other period determinations were made by European astronomers (20 h; Δ0.2) at OHP and La Silla in October 1996 (U=2),[14] and by Andrea Ferrero (25.44 h; Δ0.25) at the Italian Bigmuskie Observatory (B88) in November 2013 (U=2).
[6][7][8][9][10][11] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link adopts the results obtained by IRAS, that is, an albedo of 0.2351 and a diameter of 18.11 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 10.9.