The fact is you could take away the Episode subtitles and the entire saga would lose nothing.
“A New Hope” is easily the worst title for a film (maybe ever?). You can type this shit, but who wants to refer to their favorite movie as “A. New. Hope.”?
It’s Star Wars and it will always be Star Wars. It has sequels and prequels but it will always be the first one.
Even in terms of the eventual 9-part saga as a whole, I will refer to Star Wars as IV but probably never “A New Hope” because it’s just…terrible. Imagine if VI was “There Is Another”.
In fact, if you say you just watched Star Wars to someone there should really be no confusion. No one would say that title by itself referring to any other part of the saga.