[1] This minor planet was named by Palisa after Friedrich Kovacs (1861–1931), a Vienna physician and internists, who successfully treated and restored the health of the discoverer's wife.

Kovacs imposed a curtailment of all forms of vigorous exercise, a strict regimen of rest and even the usage of a pedometer to measure the composer's physical effort.

[14]: 23 In February 2008, a rotational lightcurve of Kovacia was obtained from photometric observations by a collaboration of French and Italian amateur astronomers including René Roy, Silvano Casulli, François Colas, Arnaud Leroy, Federico Manzini, Christophe Demeautis and Jean-François Coliac.

Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of 8.6772±0.0001 hours with a high brightness variation of 0.86±0.02 magnitude, indicative of a non-spherical, elongated shape (U=3).

The result supersedes a previous observation by Roberto Crippa and Federico Manzini at the Sozzago Astronomical Station (A12) from November 2006, that determined a lower limit of 6 hours (U=1+).

[11] Due to observed mutual occultation and eclipsing events, the collaboration of astronomers strongly suspect Kovacia to be a binary asteroid with a satellite orbiting it every 31.9580±0.0005 days.