Which wars are "Star Wars"?

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Which wars does the title "Star Wars" refer to? Are they:

the struggle between the Rebels and the Empire?

the Clone Wars (mentioned as early as the first half hour of A New Hope)?

the age-old conflict between Jedi and Sith?

the war between good and evil in general?

all of the above?

none of the above, in which case the title was chosen just to sound cool and/or alluring?

When Lucas wrote down the phrase "Star Wars", which events in the Star Wars universe was he referring to, if any?

Answer

For an out-of-universe answer, George Lucas did address the origin of the title in this article from the March 1979 issue of The Atlantic

"The title Star Wars was an insurance policy. The studio didn't see it that way; they thought science fiction was a very bad genre, that women didn't like it, although they did no market research on that until after the film was finished. But we calculated that there are something like $8 million worth of science fiction freaks in the USA, and they will go to see absolutely anything with a title like Star Wars." Beyond that audience, Lucas was firm that the general public should be encouraged to see the film not as esoteric science fiction but as a space fantasy.

This would lend credence to the idea that Lucas was not referring to a particular in-universe event, but rather chose the title to "sound cool and/or alluring."

Of course, there are good in-universe Wars the title could refer to, as the other answers document.

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