who named some of the chess openings?
It's the chess community as a whole who names openings. Authors give names to openings in their writings, sometimes it sticks, sometimes it doesn't and later another name takes over. The name "Caro-Kann" is just the combination of the first two players who played it and published serious analysis on it (Horatio Caro and Markus Kann). Some claim they did join analysis, but it's more likely the two names were added to avoid any further debate on who was the pioneer (especially since Caro was english and Kann austrian).