On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 3:59 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
Klingons undoubtedly think Federation Standard is dumb for getting this all mixed up.
Star Trek's planet-naming scheme follows longstanding Science Fiction convention, which arguably evolved organically rather than having been set down with a strict definition. In the real world, the pattern for labeling exoplanets is based on their order of discovery and has nothing to do with the orbital distance from their parent star. This is a relatively recent extension of the International Astronomical Union's rules for multiple-star systems -- back when Star Trek started calling things "Rigel 6" etc., no exoplanets had yet been observed and there was not yet a need for a way to name them. -- ghunchu'wI'