It was discovered on 9 August 1948, by South African astronomer Ernest Leonard Johnson at Union Observatory in Johannesburg.

[15] This minor planet was named for English-born, American comedian Bob Hope (1903–2003), star of innumerable feature film, theater, TV and radio productions, and known for the horror comedy Cat and the Canary (1939).

[17] Bobhope has been characterized as a carbonaceous C-type asteroid,[3] which agrees with the overall spectral type of the Meliboea family.

[12] A previously published lightcurve by French amateur astronomer Bernard Christophe gave a somewhat longer period of 6.0888±0.0007 hours with an amplitude of 0.50 (U=2).

[10][11] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.0586 and a diameter of 38.0 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 10.8.