It was speculated that "Sonja" could have been chosen based on the two letter of its provisional designation, . It is also speculated, that the name "Sonja" might have been on a list of generic German female names sent by the German ARI to several discoverers of minor planets in 1913, requesting the immediate naming of their discoveries in order to avoid confusion and possible errors (). Among the many thousands of named minor planets, "Sonja" is one of 120 asteroids, for which no official naming citation has been published. All of these low-numbered asteroids have numbers between and and were discovered between 1876 and the 1930s, predominantly by astronomers Auguste Charlois, Johann Palisa, Max Wolf and Karl Reinmuth "(also see )".