Why do you suppose it was a common practice to name constellations?

Answer 1

In order for people to be able to discuss them in the coffee shop during the day.

Maybe the same reason that people gave names to streets, neighborhoods,
ranches, villages, cities, counties, states, and countries.

That way, when you want to refer to it in conversation with somebody else,
it's a lot easier to tell him which one you're talking about.

That's my opinion. Naturally, I could be wrong.

Answer 2

Constellations are arbitrary groupings of stars, organized by the way we see them. In other words, an observer will see a certain pattern, and say "Oh, this looks like a scorpion". But a different observer, from another culture, may have organized the stars into completely different pictures.

Answer 3

It's a matter of access, which oftentimes comes down to geography and technology. Western science traces back to the early scientists of European countries, such as astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus [February 19, 1473-May 24, 1543] and Galileo Galilei [February 15, 1564-January 8, 1642]. The records that were geographically most accessible were largely in Latin, Greek, and Arabic. The technology of the times got in the way of their access to the stargazing of the Maya in Latin America, and of the Chinese. Specifically, the Latin names of 48 constellations were recorded in the 2nd century of the Christian era by Claudius Ptolemy [after A.D. 83-c. 168]. Many of the names were translations from the original Greek. For the Latin and Greek civilizations shared the same gods, and the same mythology. So their astronomers mapped and organized the night skies with these beliefs in mind. They identified over 1,000 stars. A way of finding these stars night after night was connecting them into imagined figures. These figures could be memory aids to history, such as Heracles and Theseus as founders of two out of the three tribes that formed ancient Greece. Or they could be memory aids to the exploits of the gods, such as Ursa Major being the fate of Callisto aka Kallisto, the great love of Jupiter aka Zeus.

Answer 4

To have a way to refer to the patterns of the sky. #SWAG

Answer 5

Zodiac refers, precisely, to 12 constellations along the Ecliptic (the plane of Earth's path around the Sun).

Answer 6

So they can have a common framework in discussions.