What would make the name Romulan "strangely familiar" to Archer's team? At this stage, nothing remotely Roman would be associated with these space folks; it's just another space word that happens to be homonym to an Earth word, no stranger than having a Vulcan named Spock (or a planet named Vulcan when it comes to that).
It is only with Kirk's encounter that an association between Romulus and Romulus might be revealed. But at that point, the UT is probably at play, inventing Roman-sounding terminology where none exists ("Centurion" is unlikely to be a word from the Romulan language, and the original Romulan word need not have meant "Boss of a hundred" in direct translation, either, but the UT aims to please, similarly inventing "Troglyte" to denote cave-dwellers etc).
What to make of Rigel in "Broken Bow"? The Trek universe might have lacked a prominent star by that Earth name; the name might have been pronounced Rig-ill as it really should in the Trek universe, rather than Rye-gel as it is in ours; or the heroes dismissed the possibility of it being an Earth name because, well, it was spoken by a Klingot...
When T'Pol then says there's a place name Rigel nearby, it's unlikely to be called Rigel in any Earth language - it's a name of alien origin instead. The "real" Rigel at the constellation Orion is probably called Budgrahooch in the Klingot language anyway.
Timo Saloniemi
