It was discovered on 15 January 1988, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at the Anderson Mesa Station of the Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff, Arizona, in the United States.

[1] On 14 May 2021, the object was named by the Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature (WGSBN), after Dracius from Greek mythology, who was a commander of the Epeans of Elis, who defended the Argive ships from Hector's attack during the Trojan War.

[2] Before Dracius was named, it belonged to a small group of only 8 unnamed minor planets with a designated number smaller than 5000.

[19] Since 1992, several rotational lightcurves of Dracius have been obtained from photometric observations by Stefano Mottola, as well as Daniel Coley and Robert Stephens at the Center for Solar System Studies, California, in collaboration with Linda French and Brian Warner.

[7][8][9] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link adopts the results obtained by IRAS, that is, an albedo of 0.0514 and a diameter of 92.93 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 9.0.