How do chess openings officially get recognized? With so many combinations of moves possible, how do openings get recognized? For example, what is to prevent me from playing a series of moves and declaring it the xaisoft gambit or xaisoft heart-attack?  What organization officially recognizes openings?
There's no organization that officially names openings.  Generally, the first person to publish professional-level research for a sequence of moves gets to name it.

Many openings with modern names were first played 200 years ago.