I fucked up a little so I understand the confusion, stars are typically in capital letters, A, B, C.
though clear distinctions are also made here. B, C, D implies a hierarchy of orbits, A is the primary gravitational pull in its system
Aa, Ab, (etc.) is used when two (or more) stars have a common center of mass
Real implications of this example:
Kepler-16A and Kepler-16B have a planet that orbits both (but to be clear they do not having a common center of mass), so it is Kepler-16b, and I didn't look it up but I assume it's not 16ABb because there aren't any A or B planets to differentiate it with
Polaris Aa and Ab are orbiting around a common center of mass, and Polaris B orbits them from further away
Castor has 6 stars, here's an image
Aa and Ab are still the main center of mass in this system
as an added bonus, black holes do not have a naming convention yet, Sagittarius A* is just in the Sagittarius A region and * is to indicate an exciting or interesting object
and to my knowledge, it is theoretically possible for a planet to orbit an Aa star without orbiting an Ab star but I don't think we know of any, I assume it would be named like Aa b
Bing 'chat mode' (read: hooked GPT-4 to their search engine) does in essentially this format.