I’m writing a work where characters are on a fictional planet not in our solar system. I wanted to refer to the planet’s star/source of light as “the sun” still, but is that correct? Is the sun as we know it the only “sun”, or is sun simply a word to describe our source of light?
In: Planetary Science
The sun is what we, specifically, call our central star. Its name is also technically Sol. We (on Earth) don’t refer to any other star as “the sun” because our language and culture evolved around having just one that really, *really* mattered to us.
Another planet could, and likely would, have a similar deal going on. It’s possible not the exact same word would be used (bc English language + cultural history) but I personally see no issue with that. It’ll be *their* sun, and I’ve seen this used in science fiction before as such.
I mean, its a work of fiction. you can call your stories sun whatever you want. Don’t let the internet decide for you what you can call things in your work.
Sun is the name of our star, although it is usually said as a title “The Sun”. But it has had many other names, and Sol is a popular way to rename it and might be use. Same with The Moon, it is literally called The Moon. But since other planets have moons and we call those moons, Luna is often used in scientific papers to refer to it, to make it easier to seperate from other moons.
Wouldn’t sweat it friend. Soooo many sci fi and fantasy novels have characters stick things ‘into the earth’.
And sometimes their characters eat off china plates.
Even the mighty Frank Herbert used the word “ghibli” to describe a desert wind on Dune when the etymology of ghibli is that of a specific wind blowing from “qibla”, a location only found on what would then be super ancient Earth.
I too agonise over these things (can I use “excruciating” if my setting has never had a crucifixion?), but in the end if it doesn’t take the reader out of the story, then it’s probably fine. Let your sun shine.
It’s kind of both, largely because language is imprecise and we haven’t had a need yet to officially decide if our sun is the “Sun” or not. In popular culture it’s not rare to hear whatever star a planet orbits being referred to as its sun (Or suns, if the planet orbits a multiple star system like the planet Tattoine in the Star Wars universe).
In situations like that it’s not uncommon for the sun that Earth orbits to be called Sol, though really Sol is just Latin for Sun so it’s still a little vague. For story purposes it’s probably reasonable to refer to “sun” as the star a planet orbits, though other stars from ours will likely need a better proper name than “Sun but in Latin”.
Yes, that’s totally fine. “Sun” is typically used to mean the closest star(s) from the perspective of the planet. For instance, Tatooine’s twin suns.
This works the same was as moon, where we call our moon “the moon” but also acknowledge that other planets have multiple moons.
If you want to distinguish our sun/moon/planet from the primary sun/moon/planet of an alien species, we often use the Latin versions (Sol/Luna/Terra) to refer to these specific bodies.
Regarding alien languages, I always imagine that the foreign language is being translated to English. So since “sun” is the word we use to refer to “the primary light source of our planet,” it makes sense that the word they use for that would also be translated as “sun.”
Will you be calling a day a “day?”
A mountain a “mountain?”
You can go any direction you want when writing.
Definitely a question for a writing sub.
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