# Does our Sun have a name? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 5, 2006, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186 "2006-03-05T22:38:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![cantara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6f9a4e/32.png) [@cantara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cantara)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/21 "2006-03-06T14:01:25Z")
I had heard it used in sci-fi stories, usually when Earth is Terra or humans are Terrans, but had always seen articles calling it the Sun, or our star. Recently, I have seen it in diagrams and illustrations describing our place in the galaxy/universe where various stars are pointed out. It doesn’t surprise me that a solar astronomer would refer to it as the sun, since that’s what it is. It just seems more appropriate in sci-fi. > [@Dr Paprika](#): > > (Canadian joke) > Now, here’s the complete sketch again. > (/Canadian joke) C’est bon…that’s good. ☹ \<-Sol smiley ---
**Author:** ![Nic2004](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/4491bb/32.png) [@Nic2004](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nic2004)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/22 "2006-03-06T14:14:22Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > I’m not saying such a word does not exist. I’m just saying it’s not generally used by scientists, at least those scientists who study the Sun. > There are many other cases where the adjective is derived from latin, but the root word is not commonly used in English. For example, we have _teeth_ but when we get them examined, that’s a _dental_ exam. _Dental_ is derived from the latin word _dens_. Should we start taking _toothal exams_ instead? Good points. I like toothal exam though and will use it at my next visit to the teethologist. Mmmm. _Den exam_? _Den-ectomy_? _Sans-Dens_? Denless? ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/23 "2006-03-07T00:38:18Z")
> [@Nic2004](#): > > I had heard Sol, and Luna, in scientific discussions and is where **Sol** ar and **Luna** r terms originate Crappy science fiction authors seem to think that using Latin terms rather than English ones lends their writing some caché (without the trouble of dreaming up good characters and believable plots.) “Sol” is just Latin for “sun”, and “luna” is Latin for “moon”. There’s nothing about the Latin words that makes them somehow “official” or “technical”. It’s pretentious idiocy to insist that there’s some “real” word for these things beyond the words we actually use. > [@Nic2004](#): > > Any idea why the coincidence in Sol and solar without any real connection? Not being snarky, just curious. 😕 There is of course a connection. “Solar” and “lunar” come from Latin as do many scientific terms. So? There’s _tons_ of those pairs, where a native English term exists next to more specialized Latin terms. Using different examples, you could use the same nonsense argument to claim that the “real” word for “tooth” is “dens” because that’s the Latin word and we use other Latinate terms like “dental” and “dentist”. Oh, dammit! Reading further down, I see that **scr4** thought up my clever “tooth” vs. “dens” example before I did. I’m leaving it in, though. > [@Sage Rat](#): > > And the Earth is of course Terra. If you are a particularly bad sci-fi author or just incredibly pretentious. > [@cantara](#): > > I had heard it used in sci-fi stories, usually when Earth is Terra or humans are Terrans, but had always seen articles calling it the Sun, or our star. Recently, I have seen it in diagrams and illustrations describing our place in the galaxy/universe where various stars are pointed out. It doesn’t surprise me that a solar astronomer would refer to it as the sun, since that’s what it is. It just seems more appropriate in sci-fi. Right. This is _strictly_ a sci-fi convention, _not_ a scientific one. People who believe that sci-fi (and it really is something I’ve only seen in _bad_ sci-fi) is reality are probably beyond help, but it’s definitely only a custom from pulp sci-fi novels and not from science, let alone from broader society. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/24 "2006-03-07T03:04:05Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > caché Another way to lend cachet to one’s writing is to add a French word here and there. Maybe to lend caché to one’s writing would mean to hide it. _Caché_ means ‘hidden’. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/25 "2006-03-07T03:58:22Z")
I thought it was “the earth’s sun”. ---
**Author:** ![Dubious\_Weasle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b782af/32.png) [@Dubious\_Weasle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dubious_Weasle)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/26 "2006-03-07T05:01:44Z")
Seems to be that the reason the scientific community tends to use “the sun” rather then “sol” [not sure if this is really true but it’s been asserted and so I’ll run with it] is that in most cases there’s not a lot of need differentiate. If you say, “the sun” everyone knows which star you’re talking about. Until we’re living on planets with different suns, just saying “the sun” suffices just fine. Likewise, if there’s only one major city that you’re ever likely to visit or be effected by then it suffices just to call it “the city.” If there are several though, then you start using proper names. I suppose an even better analogy would to be imagine that you live in a very small, isolated village. In fact, so isolated that no one has actually ever been to another town and no one from another town has visited. Now, you might have accounts of other towns existing and have names for all of them but there’s not really a need to refer to your own village as anything other then “the village.” Thus, while Sol may be the “proper” name for the sun, there’s really not much need for anyone other then science-fiction writers to actually use it. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/27 "2006-03-07T05:14:46Z")
If Elvis Costello’s aim is true, then the sun’s name is **Alice.** ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/28 "2006-03-07T05:42:04Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Another way to lend cachet to one’s writing is to add a French word here and there. > > Maybe to lend caché to one’s writing would mean to hide it. _Caché_ means ‘hidden’. :smack: Thank you. I knew it looked funny when I wrote it, but I couldn’t figure out why. Matter of fact, I think I’ve been corrected on the issue before, and here on the SDMB no less. Stuff just doesn’t always stick. > [@Dubious Weasle](#): > > Seems to be that the reason the scientific community tends to use “the sun” rather then “sol” [not sure if this is really true but it’s been asserted and so I’ll run with it] is that in most cases there’s not a lot of need differentiate. If you say, “the sun” everyone knows which star you’re talking about. Until we’re living on planets with different suns, just saying “the sun” suffices just fine. > > Likewise, if there’s only one major city that you’re ever likely to visit or be effected by then it suffices just to call it “the city.” If there are several though, then you start using proper names. > > I suppose an even better analogy would to be imagine that you live in a very small, isolated village. In fact, so isolated that no one has actually ever been to another town and no one from another town has visited. Now, you might have accounts of other towns existing and have names for all of them but there’s not really a need to refer to your own village as anything other then “the village.” > > Thus, while Sol may be the “proper” name for the sun, there’s really not much need for anyone other then science-fiction writers to actually use it. Then what is the sun’s “proper name” if not “the sun”? Why does it have a “proper name”? Where did it get it from? The Latin “sol, solis” is defined by my Latin dictionary as “sun, sunlight, sunshine, day”. The word “sol” is nothing but the Latin translation of “sun”. Why do you imagine there’s some “proper name” that’s somehow different from the common name? I mean, a city that has a proper name has an official name under which it was incorporated. A person has a proper name composed of a given name and surnames, assigned at birth (though perhaps changed later on.) When something has a “proper name”, it’s because that name has been assigned to it or recorded for it by some official body. The closest thing we have to an official body is the IAU, as **Polycarp** mentioned. And they call it, uh, “the sun” (when writing in English.) If you want to argue that we _should_ decide the sun has a “proper name”, and assign it “Sol”, you may do so, and I’ll argue against it on the basis that it’s insufferably pretentious and smacks of pulp sci-fi novels. But you can’t claim that it _has_ a proper name, since there’s no one who’s given it one besides the IAU, and they recommend using the common term in any given language. It doesn’t have a name written on it, you know. Names are an entirely human creation; objects don’t possess names independent of humans giving them names. Which is obvious, I know, but discussion about the sun’s “proper name” as though it has one, secretly, and we just need to figure out what it is sorta suggests that people think there’s some Platonic ideal somewhere with “Sol” written on a little card next to it in the display case. There’s no reason to choose the Latin word for “sun” as opposed to any other language, in my opinion. And “sol” is nothing but the Latin translation of the English “sun”. It’s not a _name_ any more than “sun” is. If you want a name for the sun analogous to the names we’ve given other stars, you can decide to give it one, and maybe it’ll catch on. But there isn’t really a name for the sun analogous to the names of stars because when we started out naming these things, we didn’t perceive them as analogous. The Latin word “sol” reflects that ignorance just as much as the English word “sun” does - the sun was regarded as something special and unique in the universe, wholly different from the countless stars surrounding it. We understand now that that’s not the case. But there just isn’t some “real name” for the sun, because we haven’t agreed on one for it. “The sun” works fine for me; if we colonize Alpha Centauri at some point, we can call that “Alpha Centauri” or we can call it “the sun” as well - odds are there won’t be any confusion. That’s sort of a moot point, though, since colonizing the stars appears to be confined by physical laws to science fiction (although unlike the word “sol”, it’s not strictly confined to crappy science fiction.) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/29 "2006-03-07T06:25:39Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > > [@Sage Rat](#): > > > > And the Earth is of course Terra. > > If you are a particularly bad sci-fi author or just incredibly pretentious. They may be the only ones to use it, but that still doesn’t mean it isn’t the official name of the planet. If you don’t like it don’t use it, but trying to smack it down as non-official in GQ is disingenuous. > [@Wikipedia](#): > > The official name for the planet Earth, as set by the International Astronomical Union, is Terra, after the Roman goddess Terra Mater. With this name, all the planets in our solar system known from ancient times are now named for Roman gods or goddesses. Terra is also the Latin word for “earth” (soil). ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/30 "2006-03-07T06:31:59Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Then what is the sun’s “proper name” if not “the sun”? “The sun” is a title just the same as “the Queen” isn’t the proper name of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor. Just because no one calls her Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor and would get a weird look it they did doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with her having a proper name. ---
**Author:** ![Dubious\_Weasle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b782af/32.png) [@Dubious\_Weasle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dubious_Weasle)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/31 "2006-03-07T06:58:25Z")
> [@](#): > > Then what is the sun’s “proper name” if not “the sun”? Why does it have a “proper name”? Where did it get it from? The Latin “sol, solis” is defined by my Latin dictionary as “sun, sunlight, sunshine, day”. The word “sol” is nothing but the Latin translation of “sun”. Why do you imagine there’s some “proper name” that’s somehow different from the common name? This is why I put “proper” name in quotes. My point was that the reason we use “The Sun” as the proper noun to describe the sun which we deal with on a daily basis is that there’s little reason to be more specific. I do see where the confusion lies though. When I said: > [@](#): > > Thus, while Sol may be the “proper” name for the sun I should have phrased it as, “while Sol may one day be/should be the “proper” name for the sun…” as I am in no way asserting that Sol is the scientific name for the star we orbit, also known as our sun, and finally The Sun. The point I was trying to put forth is that we don’t really have a _scientific_ name for The Sun. I would argue that when we decide on a scientific or “proper” name it should be “Sol” in keeping with naming conventions used previously. Now I am sure there are those that would assert that “The Sun” and “The Moon” are/should be the scientific names but frankly I think that captializing a word to make it a proper noun and then calling it a\* scientific\* name is just silly. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/32 "2006-03-07T07:12:09Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#): > > They may be the only ones to use it, but that still doesn’t mean it isn’t the official name of the planet. If you don’t like it don’t use it, but trying to smack it down as non-official in GQ is disingenuous. Hmm. Better check your sources - the same quote implies that Uranus is named after a Roman god! I guess that’s the sort of thing that happens when you use Wikipedia as a source . . . > [@Sage Rat](#): > > “The sun” is a title just the same as “the Queen” isn’t the proper name of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor. Just because no one calls her Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor and would get a weird look it they did doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with her having a proper name. Sure. She _has_ a proper name. It was given, presumably, by her parents (though things work a little differently if you’re royalty, and I don’t know the specifics.) There’s no one with comparable authority to name the sun, and at least according to folks in the thread above me, the IAU (which is the closest thing we have) hasn’t decided we should all call it “Sol”. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/33 "2006-03-07T07:23:42Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Hmm. Better check your sources - the same quote implies that Uranus is named after a Roman god! I guess that’s the sort of thing that happens when you use Wikipedia as a source . . . And more to the point, I just went to the IAU’s [website](http://www.iau.org/). While I couldn’t find anything to directly address the issue, [this page](http://www.iau.org/SPELLING_OF_NAMES.240.0.html) implies that the name they use is “Earth”; further, I can’t find _any_ results in their search engine for “terra” or “luna”, and “sol” appears to be used only as an abbreviation for “solar”. I call shenanigans on Wikipedia, because I can’t find _any_ evidence that their contention that “Terra” is the “official” name given by the IAU is true. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/34 "2006-03-07T07:28:20Z")
The one thing I can say about this that hasn’t already been said is that we distinguish in usage between capitalized names - “the Sun,” “the Moon,” “the Earth,” - as proper names of astronomical bodies, and lowercased names - “the sun,” “the moon,” “the earth” - as more general terms. Thus you would say “the Earth orbits the Sun,” but “the moon is out” or “I was sitting in the sun.” ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/35 "2006-03-07T10:20:26Z")
**Juliet** is the sun. ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/36 "2006-03-07T15:02:20Z")
Feel free to [search the astronomical literature.](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html) It’s not easy, though, because the term “terra” is used for mountainous regions on other planets, the term “sol” is used to refer to a day on Mars, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to search for “luna” without hitting on “lunar,” (a problem that also exists for “sol” and “solar” but maybe some other bright person work it out. But, anyway, you’ll have a lot easier time finding papers that talk about the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun (though if you click the A link for some of the entries to read their abstracts, you will find that not all authors follow the IAU recommendation to capitalize these names.) ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/37 "2006-03-07T15:45:00Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > 😕 There is of course a connection. “Solar” and “lunar” come from Latin as do many scientific terms. So? There’s _tons_ of those pairs, where a native English term exists next to more specialized Latin terms. Using different examples, you could use the same nonsense argument to claim that the “real” word for “tooth” is “dens” because that’s the Latin word and we use other Latinate terms like “dental” and “dentist”. Even more relevantly, we can point to words like “heliocentric,” “aphelion,” “perihelion” and “selenology”, which derive from greek – rather than latin – mythology. I notice nobody has claimed that the sun is called Helios. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/38 "2006-03-07T15:49:27Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > It’s pretentious idiocy to insist that there’s some “real” word for these things beyond the words we actually use…If you are a particularly bad sci-fi author or just incredibly pretentious…Right. This is _strictly_ a sci-fi convention, _not_ a scientific one. People who believe that sci-fi (and it really is something I’ve only seen in _bad_ sci-fi) is reality are probably beyond help, but it’s definitely only a custom from pulp sci-fi novels and not from science, let alone from broader society. I don’t understand the vitriol. One of the conceits of a lot of scifi/fantasy (not just the bad ones) is that there are other inhabited solar systems. In that case, our sun _does_ need a proper name. It doesn’t seem to me to be idiotic to choose the Latin name in that case. It might not actually be true, or might not happen, but it certainly isn’t illogical. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/39 "2006-03-07T15:55:42Z")
\ Jesus! \ ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186/40 "2006-03-07T16:12:25Z")
Going from memory here, but … I could have sworn I’ve seen spectral-class star charts (based on [the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram](http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Stars/hrdiagram.html)) in texbooks or in popular science books that will list the sun as “Sol”. I can only guess that it may, to the author of such works, seem odd that all the other stars in the chart have proper names, while the Sun “doesn’t”. I have no problem with the proposition that the convention of calling the sun “Sol” was lifted neatly from pulp science fiction. A perfunctory Google search seems to suggest that most of the online spectral class charts just call the sun “Sun”, or “The Sun”. Perhaps the use of “Sol” became negatively stigmatized in some way, and has fallen out of whatever level of favor it may have had at one time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-our-sun-have-a-name/347186.md?page=3)