Comets are often named after their discoverers; for example, comet McNaught, also known as the Great Comet of 2007, is named after British-Australian astronomer Robert H. McNaught. Ground-based and space-based telescopes and observatories are also good at finding comets, so the names of many comets include their names, such as ISON or Tsuchinshan (Purple Mountain Observatory).
Some comets are given a designation that includes the year of discovery and a letter or number indicating the order in which they were discovered that year. For instance, the name C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) indicates it is a non-periodic comet (designated with a "C") discovered in 2023 in the first half of January (this corresponds to the letter A in the IAU comet naming system), and it was the third comet discovered in the same period (hence the number 3). Tsuchinshan-ATLAS means that the discovery was made using the telescopes of the Purple Mountain Observatory (Zijinshan Astronomical Observatory) and the Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS).