It's a more basic idea, that everyone would start out with earth, sky, sun, other lights in the sky, and name from there
The problem is that it's too basic. We always assume that everyone everywhere will think exactly like us, and then we actually go find out and discover that they actually went in a totally different direction that never occurred to us. Similarly, we used to assume other star systems would develop the same way as ours, but now we know from our exoplanet studies that our system is actually quite atypical. The problem with having yourself as the only example is that it's impossible to really know whether that example is typical or not. So it's dangerous to take for granted that it is. Especially when it comes to ways of thinking. We all make assumptions that we don't even realize we're making, so it never occurs to us that someone else might not make them. When I'm worldbuilding aliens and their points of view, I always try to question the things I take for granted, and try to imagine possible alternatives that might arise from other first principles. After all, alien means different and unfamiliar.
(I'm ignoring Water because of the long-standing SF question over whether an aquatic species would develop astronomy).
Depends. A species that lived in the depths, like some sort of giant squid civilization, obviously wouldn't, but a surface-dwelling species might rely on astronomy for navigation or as a calendar to know when their prey's migration or breeding season was about to begin, say.
Besides, does it matter? Again, what I'm saying is that the original name a culture develops for a world is likely to about
before it learns to think of that world as a planet in space -- when it's just their general environment. So the name wouldn't come from astronomy, it would come from everyday life, and then be repurposed as the name of the planet once they realize it's a planet. Or, hey, maybe it wouldn't. Again, that's just assuming an alien culture would follow the same pattern ours did, and assumptions are dangerous. Maybe a culture that realized the world it inhabited was just a planet in space would decide that the new understanding of it required a new name for it. There are many possibilities.
Also, a species doesn't necessarily have to have gotten into space on its own to be part of an interstellar culture. It could've been contacted by other aliens and joined their existing interstellar community. In which case, the name of their planet might well be the one given to it by the aliens who contacted them, since those aliens would've been the first to think of it as a planet per se.
A telepathic translator would transfer such concepts - possibly even down to calling a reddish planet Mars, or an evening/morning star Venus.
That would be a pretty badly programmed translator. Mars is the name of a god of war, Venus a goddess of love. Neither of the names refers to the physical or astronomical properties you're describing. Again, the name "Earth" originated before we thought of it as a planet -- when it was just the land we lived on as opposed to the sky. The assumption is that other civilizations that developed and thought similarly to ours would go through the same process. Even if their planet were arid and reddish, they'd still think of it as their native land and, by this assumption, most likely call it something that meant "land" or "soil." If it were their name for some
other planet in their sky, then it wouldn't have the same mythological basis we use for our planet names. A reddish planet in their sky might be named for the goddess of fire instead of the god of war. Or if they were on a planet with reddish vegetation, it might be named for the counterpart of Demeter, say. Or they might not even use mythological names for the planets at all.
