keypusher: <fredthebear> <SS>I learned somewhere that 5.Bxf6 <was> called Anderssen's Attack. Although Anderssen seems to have gone out of his way to avoid following up with e4-e5, as Charousek did eventually here and Richter seems to have invariably done immediately.
As for why it's named after Richter rather than Charousek, probably because Richter seems to have played it more successfully and systematically, and maybe he wrote an article about it. Or when they got around to naming the variation, maybe the namer knew about Richter's games but not Charousek's. Who knows? Not me. Maybe someone else does, but it probably isn't a very interesting story.
There's a Caro-Kann sideline: 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5. In this database at least, it's called the Botvinnik-Carls Defense. Checking OE, there's one game in which Carls played it (he wasn't the first, either), three games in which Botvinnik played it, and 33 games in which Keith Arkell played it. And unlike Botvinnik, who essayed it three times in the rematch with Tal and dropped it like a hot potato after losing in the third game, Arkell has stuck by the variation for decades. Arkell thinks, not unreasonably, that the variation should be named for him. But, unquestionably the highest-profile moment for 3....c5 was the 1961 world championship, so Botvinnik got his name attached to the move. But is that a mistake? No, not really.
In short, there's only one right answer to the question of how an opening should be named: who cares?
Kibitzing
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