Named in honor of Seiichi Sakuma (b. 1929), a Japanese amateur astronomer and an eminent observer of variable stars since 1942. Sakuma played the principal role in founding the Variable Star Observers League in Japan, publishing its Variable Star Bulletin and constructing its database of more than one million Japanese observations of some 4000 variable stars. This database contains observations back to 1906 and includes more than 30 000 magnitude estimates by Sakuma. Name proposed by H. Oishi, who made the principal identifications involving this minor planet.