This is more an observation than a bug report since I've found a work-around (below):
Short story:
Adding a space bar character in front of a named location adds the name to the top of the list of cities but prevents it from being saved as a 'default location'. Using any other non-alpha character as the first character of a named location adds it to the top of the list AND allows it to be saved as the default location.
Long Story:
Using Stellarium 0.11.4 OpenGL "2.1.0 - Build 8.15.10.1883"on a Windows 7 64-bit PC.
I thought I would be clever and add a custom list of local viewing locations to the long list of cities already included. But I wanted to add them to the TOP of the long list, for easy access, and not scattered throughout. So I began each named location with an underscore "_my location" but that put my aded names below other named locations beginning with an asterisk. So I got cleverer (if that's a word) and started each custom name with a space bar character " my location". Doing so neatly places my location's name on the very top of the list, but prevents it from being saved as a default location. Instead Stellarium always starts up in Paris (wish I were there instead).
Work-around: Precede custom named locations with a non-alpha character.
Thanks for all your hard work on making Stellarium world-class.
This issue related to way of storing default location in config.ini