It was written 3

The countdown to the Toronto Sun's 40th anniversary on Nov. 1 continues. 

So why was Toronto's first tabloid daily named the Sun? 

Ron Poulton provided the source in his 1976 book Life in a Word Factory, a 112-page history of the tabloid commissioned by co-founder Doug Creighton.  

He wrote:

The same lack of fussy deliberation was at work when the Sun was given its name. No committee was formed. No meetings were held. No polls were taken and nobody floundered around in debate.

John Bassett had denied everybody the luxury procrastination when he announced (on October 4, 1971) that the last edition of the Tely would appear October 30. The Sun group didn't have any time to ruminate about names.

The tabloid could just as easily have been called the News or the Times. Some sentimentalists even struggled briefly to hammer the word "Telegram" onto its masthead. No one took them seriously.

The matter landed in Andy Donato's lap, and he dusted off the dummy of a tabloid he had designed for Johnny Bassett in 1964. Its working title was the Sun; a name that survived when John Bassett published a newspaper called The Sunday Sun in Oakville in 1968.

When the subject came up, Don Hunt had more pressing things to think about than a name for the newspaper. He suggested only that its name be short, and he toyed briefly with the notion that some of the success of the New York Daily News might rub off if the tabloid was called the News. But he wasn't adamant, and neither was anyone else.

They didn't complain when Donato decided to call it the Sun without consulting anybody.