This minor planet was named by the discoverers after Australian geologist Victor Gostin (born 1940) of the University of Adelaide, who in the 1980s discovered the ejecta layer from the Acraman bolide impact at a distance of 300 kilometers from the impact site, within Ediacaran sedimentary rocks of the Flinders Ranges, South Australia, which enabled the impact to be dated at ~580 Ma. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 2 February 1988 (M.P.C. 12808).