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felixrocket7835 t1_iy04mix wrote

This is objectively incorrect, the Sun is the name for OUR star, there are not multiple suns.

"The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System."

"The star round which the earth orbits."

Couple of definitions

"Sun" isn't a label for a type of star or a different name for a star, it's just a name for the star we orbit, people often get confused as we call our moon, the moon, and other natural satellites, moons, some articles will say suns instead of stars to not confuse those with rather bad astronomy knowledge.

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SyncMeASong t1_iy21mfz wrote

Merriam-Webster has entered the chat

sun b: a celestial body like the sun : STAR

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ParticleDetector OP t1_iy271pr wrote

It’s like that as well on the Oxford Dictionary and the Collin’s dictionary but I’m still getting downvoted for mentioning that it’s also like that in popular fiction :(

Apparently the sun as a common noun is not…accepted by everyone?

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Criticalhit_jk t1_iy2vjcn wrote

It probably wouldn't take me very long to find someone who unironically doesn't believe in the sun in this day and age, so don't take it too hard if someone disagrees with your verbiage regarding it

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ParticleDetector OP t1_iy2y8w0 wrote

Omg you made me go google ‘the sun is fake’ and ‘flat earthers don’t believe in sun’ and other stuff lol.

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ChainSword20000 t1_iy0yatl wrote

Sol is the name. Sun is its role. The earths sun, tatooines sun, etc. Its the SOLar system.

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iamblankenstein t1_iy1hy64 wrote

"sol" is the latin word for "the sun". sun and sol are often used interchangeably, but both are just names for the star in our local solar system, not a "role" it's playing.

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AxialGem t1_iy0wqlc wrote

If you're big into dictionary definitions, wiktionary has the following:

"A star, especially when seen as the centre of any single solar system"

And OED lists: "any star around which planets move"

The thing is, the usage of a word determines its meaning, not any one definition. And the word sun is in fact habitually used to mean 'star,' just read or listen to works of sci-fi I guess. If you pretend it's not, you're simply not capturing the full meaning.

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alfology2 t1_iy2smue wrote

How do you know what the other stars are called? Have you been there?

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Th3Banzaii t1_iy2ye7h wrote

We named them. We only used the most unimaginative names for our stuff, Sun, Moon and Earth.

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alfology2 t1_iy324tk wrote

We’ve not named all the stars. Might be another one out there called sun

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mfb- t1_iy3kede wrote

We won't name another star "sun" or its equivalent in other languages, that would just be confusing for no reason.

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alfology2 t1_iy3nuyb wrote

The universe is infinite innit. Also who says we have to name it for it to be called the sun

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ParticleDetector OP t1_iy0n9i8 wrote

Popular media has made it such that some people do call other stars ‘sun’ though.

e.g

Krypton’s red sun

tattoine’s twins suns

Romulan sun

Etcetc

So much so that I think many people would imagine standing on an alien planet, looking up at their version of the star the planet is orbiting, and casually say ‘damn the sun is sure hot today’.

Edit : I’m not saying people are calling every star as ‘suns’ interchangeably, I’m saying people call the star a planet is orbiting as the ‘sun’ of that planet.

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Artsy_traveller_82 t1_iy2llvx wrote

Our Sun is called Sol by the way. That’s why it’s called the Solar System.

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The_camperdave t1_iy2mh59 wrote

> Our Sun is called Sol by the way. That’s why it’s called the Solar System.

Yeah, and Earth is called Terra. Two names for the same object.

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KmartQuality t1_iy0uzll wrote

Whatever planet you ate orbiting is "the sun".

If you find yourself in interstellar space or around another star you could refer to the sun as "my sun/star" or "our sun/star".

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felixrocket7835 t1_iy0wk2c wrote

I have never heard that definition in my life, well, except on WalesOnline.. hardly a good source.

The Sun is the name of our star, the reason people use sun for stars is due to a misconception, thinking that sun is simply a synonym for stars.

Most dictionaries define the Sun as the star which the earth orbits.

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KmartQuality t1_iy0xcnk wrote

It's has never been uttered realistically that way because nobody has ever been close to another star.

But it makes perfect sense in science fiction

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ParticleDetector OP t1_iy2b13c wrote

Since we aren’t talking about the Sun (proper noun version), are you talking about using ‘sun’ (the common noun version) as a replacement for any star, even though it’s not orbited by planets?

If so then yeah that’s it’s weird.

But isn’t ‘sun’ (as a common noun) already being used for a rather long time to describe stars with planets, in popular works, and have such characters in such works mention is as the ‘sun’ (common noun) of that planet etc?

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone here yet say that ‘sun’ is a straight synonym for ‘star’, especially lonely stars with nothing orbiting it.

Like, if you see binary stars and nothing else in that system, we don’t call those ‘suns’ right?

I think you assumed that I was using ‘sun’ as a synonym for every single star?

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