The names of some meteorites, such as Orgueil or Millbillillie, may seem odd, but the same rules are used to name all meteorites. A meteorite is given the name of the village, post office, or geographic feature (river, mountain) that is closest to the discovery site. If two different meteorites are found in the same area, the letters "a" and "b" are added to tell them apart. You can already guess what to call a meteorite that falls in your backyard!

In Antarctica and in sparsely populated deserts, the situation is special since there are few geographic landmarks and many meteorites are found there. A system of letters and numbers was created for this. For the Antarctic, letters refer to the site, and numbers indicate the year and order in which they were discovered. ALH 84001 is the first meteorite that was discovered in 1984 on the Allan Hills site. When we are not sure of the exact location of a meteorite find, a system of letters indicates the general location of the find and the numbers are sequential. For example, NWA meteorites come from North-West Africa, and DHO meteorites are from Dhofar, Oman.