[1] Of the roughly 10,000 stars visible to the naked eye, only a few hundred have been given proper names in the history of astronomy.
Only a handful of the brightest stars have individual proper names not depending on their asterism; so Sirius ('the scorcher'), Antares ('rival of Ares', i.e., red-hued like Mars), Canopus (of uncertain origin), Alphard ('the solitary one'), Regulus ('kinglet'); and arguably Aldebaran ('the follower' [of the Pleiades]) and Procyon ('preceding the dog' [Sirius]).
The WGSN's first bulletin, dated July 2016,[3] included a table of 125 stars comprising the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN (on 30 June and 20 July 2016) together with names of stars adopted by the IAU Executive Committee Working Group on the Public Naming of Planets and Planetary Satellites during the 2015 NameExoWorlds campaign[4] and recognized by the WGSN.
These were listed in a table of 102 stars included in the WGSN's second bulletin, dated November 2016.
The WGSN decided to attribute proper names to individual stars rather than entire multiple-star systems.
For such names relating to members of multiple-star systems, and where a component letter (from, e.g., the Washington Double Star Catalog) is not explicitly listed, the WGSN says that the name should be understood to be attributed to the visually brightest component.