“Galaxy” has the same problem. It’s from Greek for “milk” (see the link to, say, “lactose”?), so originally just meant OUR galaxy (the naked-eye portion being the Milky Way. Oh, and all the other stars we see. Okay, fine, EVERY naked-eye object except that Andromeda smudge.)
There are words with origins of this type in geography, too. “Ocean” meant “the one ocean.” How about in history? The person- (or at least family-)specific name “Caesar” generalized into “czar” and “kaiser”.
Would solar panels on a space probe orbiting Alpha Centauri have to be called stellar panels, or Centauri panels?
More importantly, should I make a mod for Kerbal Space Program that renames all the solar panels as Kerbol panels?
I see what you did there.
All right… all right… but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order and a named star, what have the Romans ever done for us?
I don’t see any problem with, “our sun” and “other suns”.
It has occurred to be as well to think “planetary system” is better. Fortunately I have never corrected anyone on it.
Until reading this, it had never occurred to me that rogue planets (is that the usual term?) might have satellites, or “moons”. This would blur the meaning of the OP’s term.
I have always disliked the use of that term because it has often been used for galaxies, and star clusters.
All of this reminds me of Asimov’s peculiar kind of pedantry. He insisted that we should use satellite or natural satellite for all planets other than the earth. “Moon” was the name of our own in English. The editors of Old Farmer’s Almanac would have disagreed vehemently because they once ran an article showing that neither “Earth” nor “Moon” were really names, and then ran a contest for readers to name them. They made a point that “Luna” wasn’t really a name since it wasn’t originally in reference to a deity but simply meant luminosity, and only later was it personified.
This was one of a few things I couldn’t accept from Asimov. Originally, there was just “the Galaxy” – our own-- until it was settled that certain spiral “nebulae” were really “Island Universes” or simply other galaxies. And other stars are called star-suns or simply suns. So why not “Moon” (capitalized when in the context of astronomy, otherwise “the moon”) and “moons” of other planets?
Especially since now we are speaking of “Earths” and “Jupiters”?
Reported.
I thought ‘solar system’ already encompassed that. Our solar system may only have one star, but a bunch of planets orbiting a double star would be a solar system too, AFAICT.