diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 891db9e314..f0dc7b60a9 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,5 +1,12 @@
 # Changelog
 
+## Unreleased
+
+### Fixes
+
+- Use OpenTelemetry span name as fallback for transaction name ([#3557](https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-java/pull/3557))
+  - In certain cases we were sending transactions as "<unlabeled transaction>" when using OpenTelemetry 
+
 ## 8.0.0-alpha.4
 
 ### Fixes
diff --git a/sentry-opentelemetry/sentry-opentelemetry-core/src/main/java/io/sentry/opentelemetry/SpanDescriptionExtractor.java b/sentry-opentelemetry/sentry-opentelemetry-core/src/main/java/io/sentry/opentelemetry/SpanDescriptionExtractor.java
index 5e2c07bbdc..4f7e1a5e23 100644
--- a/sentry-opentelemetry/sentry-opentelemetry-core/src/main/java/io/sentry/opentelemetry/SpanDescriptionExtractor.java
+++ b/sentry-opentelemetry/sentry-opentelemetry-core/src/main/java/io/sentry/opentelemetry/SpanDescriptionExtractor.java
@@ -66,7 +66,9 @@ private OtelSpanInfo extractSpanDescription(
     }
 
     final @NotNull String name = otelSpan.getName();
-    final @Nullable String description = sentrySpan != null ? sentrySpan.getDescription() : name;
+    final @Nullable String maybeDescription =
+        sentrySpan != null ? sentrySpan.getDescription() : name;
+    final @NotNull String description = maybeDescription != null ? maybeDescription : name;
     return new OtelSpanInfo(name, description, TransactionNameSource.CUSTOM);
   }