Was "Death Star" an officially designated name?

Question

In A New Hope, the Death Star is only referred to as such (in dialogue) on four separate occasions; three of which are the intercom at the rebel base on Yavin 4, so I'm not sure they count as truly separate. It does appear in writing in the opening crawl and, likewise, in The Empire Strikes Back (where it is obviously not verbally mentioned at all). In Return of the Jedi, it appears again in the crawl and in dialogue -- to my count -- five times (more, but not by much given the plot). I haven't had a look through the scripts of the prequels; however, I would assume it's hardly mentioned, as it's still in the planning phase.

Anyway, it seems the only time it is referred to as the "Death Star" by an agent of the Empire is that one non-intercom-time in A New Hope and again by Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. Was the "Death Star" therefore an informal name used by the Rebellion -- albeit sparingly -- that caught on with the Empire as time went on and, if so, did it have an official designation?

Answer 1

Palpatine himself refers to it as a "battle station":

The Emperor: [In the throne room, Luke is watching the Imperial fleet attack the Rebels from the huge throne room window] As you can see, my young apprentice, your friends have failed. Now witness the firepower of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL battle station!

Source

General Tagge:

General Tagge: What of the Rebellion? If the Rebels have obtained a complete technical reading of this station, it is possible, however unlikely, they might find a weakness and exploit it.

Source (Emphasis mine)

Would this thing even need a number?

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I'm tending to dismiss Wikia on this one, they are using the Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition and I'm not convinced that's canon.

Answer 2

According to the new (Disney Canon) junior novel, Star Wars: The Princess, the Scoundrel and the Farm Boy, the Station was codenamed the Death Star;

But the system had been swarming with Imperials. They’d caught on to Leia’s bogus tale about her ship’s breaking down, but the cover had helped her stall long enough to download the technical plans for something code-named “Death Star.”

In Star Wars: A New Hope, it's referred to as the Death Star by the Imperials themselves:

IMPERIAL OFFICER: The Death Star plans are not in the main computer.

and in the film's Junior Novelisation we get the following internal monologue from Vader

Darth Vader regained control of his damaged TIE fighter. As he headed for the nearest Imperial outpost, he was not preoccupied about how he would explain the loss of the Death Star to the Emperor.

Notably, we also learn that the team tasked with the creation of the Death Star was the

Death Star Project

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While it's by no means certain that the official name for the station is "The Death Star", it's certainly called that by both the Rebels and the Empire.

Answer 3

Canon

According to Rogue One:

Galen Erso, the lead engineer on the Death Star project, says in a hologram to his daughter Jyn that "We call it the Death Star... there's no better name for it." This seems to indicate that the name originated with the engineering team.

Legends

Here's what the novel Death Star (2007) says on the matter:

Incredible to think about. And if he kept racking up missions like the one just completed, there was a very good chance that he would be assigned as unit commander on board the new station.

He led his squad back to the equatorial launching bay. Looking at the awe-inspiring base, he felt a surge of pride in the Empire, and a feeling of gratitude at being a part of the Tarkin Doctrine's glorious mission. There was no official appellation or designation, other than battle station, but there was a name for it that everybody he knew, officers and enlisted alike, used.

They called it the Death Star.

(end of Chapter 1, emphasis mine)

So at the very least, in Legends, it seems like it was an unofficial nickname in the absence of anything official other than "battle station". Note that it still doesn't say where the nickname came from; it could have just as likely been from among the Imperial troops as from Palpatine's original plans for the station, but we do know that it didn't come from the Rebellion since the book starts before the Rebels knew about it.

Answer 4

It had a few, more official sounding, names:

• Death Star I
• First Death Star
• DS-1 platform
• Ultimate Weapon
• Sentinel Base

The Death Star, also known as the Death Star I, First Death Star, DS-1 platform and previously known as the Ultimate Weapon and Sentinel Base, was a moon-sized deep space mobile battle station constructed by the Galactic Empire after the defeat of the Separatists in the Clone Wars. It boasted a primary weapon with sufficient firepower to destroy an entire planet with a single shot.

Answer 5

Yes; in the radio dramatization of A New Hope we hear a conversation between Leia and Captain Antilles (not Wedge Antilles who later flew the Death Star mission with Luke, but rather the Captain of the Tantive IV) where she asks him:

"Have you ever heard of an Imperial base code-named 'Death Star'?"

Which means that it was the official designation. Of course if that doesn't convince you, (and since it was Leia who said this then the point could be made that she wouldn't know the official designation) well earlier in the dramatization Leia has been told of the Death Star by her father.

She then lets it slip accidentally in front of a high ranking Imperial Official. He says and I quote:

"Death Star!? Where did you hear that, that is a classified ongoing Imperial project."

So to answer your question yes "Death Star" is an Official Designation.

Answer 6

A stormtrooper in A New Hope, when searching the Tantive IV, says to Darth Vader:

"The Death Star plans are not in the main computer."

This may indicate that the name is official or may have been a slip on that trooper's part.

Answer 7

In Rogue One and in the book Thrawn: Treason by Timothy Zahn, both of which are Disney Canon, have numerous references to the Death Star, but it is mostly referred to as "Project Stardust," named after Galen Erso's nickname for Jyn Erso. The Death Star was the more common name for the battle station, as it was used by everyone except for Director Krennic himself and Assistant Director Ronan.

Granted, you may be asking for Original Trilogy answers, but based on all of Disney's Canon, I would say the designated name was Stardust, which was mainly used to prevent people from realizing it was a superweapon that could provide death to the largest planet.