Why is Neptune, called Neptune?

Neptune was given it's name way in the past, before they had telescopes good enough to see it, or space probes to take images of it...yet it was named after the God Of The Sea; "Neptune".

It's kind of weird that a planet that looks like a Water Planet with clouds to me, is named after the God Of The Sea. It's like they knew something.

Could Neptune actually be a water world, with clouds and rain? I'm not sure at that distance from the sun, water would be ice, but I guess it's possible the atmosphere is a better insulator than our very own Earth, or it's heated from the core up.

It's just too much of a coincidence to me that it was named after the God Of The Sea way back then and they didn't know what it looked like. Did somebody have more information than anybody else? Did somebody or something tell them it was a water planet?

I think, more importantly, why was Uranus called Uranus when it actually doesn't concern Uranus?

I'm sorry, I can't offer an opinion.

I never really gave it too much thought.

reply to post by Tom_Proctor

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Originally, considerations for Neptune's name were either going to be "Janus" or James Challis choice of "Oceanus" Later Urbain Le Verrier submitted the name "Neptune" and was officially accepted December 29, 1846.



en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Scooby Doo

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I believe Janus is the name of one of the planets moons yes? I remember Chiron, Io, Europa... jeez that was like a decade ago learning!

Maybe they could see Neptune from here, I have heard gas can magnify and it also creates the appearance Neptune is blue, while surface actually is not.

reply to post by Whine Flu

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Well, since you ask.

Discovered by Sir William Herschel, Uranus was originally name Georgium Sidus after King George the 3rd. Another astronomer suggested the name 'Uranus' an ancient Greek god and father of Saturn. The name change was agreed upon in the early 1800's.

reply to post by Ridhya

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Neptune has 13 currently known/identified moons. As listed below.

1. Naiad
2. Thalassa
3. Despina
4. Galatea
5. Larissa
6. Proteus
7. Triton
8. Nereid
9. Halimede
10. Sao
11. Laomedeia
12. Psamathe
13. Neso

Io and Europa are both moons of Jupiter. More info and full list of Jupiter's moons: en.wikipedia.org...

There is also an ATS thread in regards to oxygen levels on Jupiter's planet Europa here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I'm pretty sure that Neptune got its name from people following the theme of Greek deities. Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, all Greek Gods. Oh, I guess all the rest of the planets other than earth are also named after Greek gods. Mercury, Venus, Mars...

I don't think there's anything profound or mystical about all this.

Neptune is much too cold to have liquid water on it. Any water would be solid ice. In fact, most elements would be solids, including gases. Seaworld, it ain't.

Or Earth being called Earth when it mostly consists of water

Who named the planets anyway ??

Scrap that last comment, it was the Greeks ... what have the Greeks ever done for us

[edit on 19-10-2009 by robert11s]

Well, take it they knew nothing about it but how it looked like, why not call it Neptune when they think it has to be made out of water?
Sounds like a good idea ...

Chaos!

reply to post by Scooby Doo

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Ja, but I did that without looking it up so I win!
but is or is not, Janus a moon of one of the planets? dont care which
I figured they named them after proximity or something, maybe looks

why is Earth called Earth and not after a greek/roman god? who came up with earth?

Here's a curve ball , who says that Neptune the planet was named after the God. Where did Neptune the God get his name from.... The planet perhaps ???

The earth is also called Gaia, a god, the Universal Mother.
Earth is rather the common name, but I don't know who invented it. You could also ask who invented the word after all.

Chaos!

AS an astrologer (neo-Vedic) I find the name Neptune very fitting. The mythology of the sea god fits. E.g. when you think about liquids, dissolution etc. Neptune and Sun too close together often describes an alcoholic father. Pluto, detto. Very fitting - you could call it Hades or what. Indian mythology has a very similar structure as Graceo-Roman - e.g. Hermes steals and cheats already as a newborn babe and then is forgiven (by Jupiter - Guru - in India, and by Apollo in Greece).
The name Uranus is less logical to me, as far as he is the father of Saturn, who devoured everyone else in the family - nevertheless we have gotten used to it. This myth to me is not at all like astrological Uranus. However, I am not yet past sixty so I may be wrong...

here's something I find interesting. 200 years ago Ceres, Vesta, Juno and Pallus were all considred planets. so if you were in a good school that taught that, you would have thought that there were more than 10 planets! and here I was mad when Pluto got the boot

First of all, the planets were named after Roman god names, not Greek god names.

In Roman Mythology, the god Saturn was the father of both the god Jupiter and the god Neptune, so it seems only logical that if one planet next to Saturn is named after one of Saturn's children, then so should the other.

As someone else mentioned above, when the dwarf planet "Ceres" was discovered in 1801 orbiting between Jupiter and Mars, it was also considered a planet -- and they fittingly named it after another of Saturn's children. By the way, Pluto is another son of Saturn, and that's why Pluto was given that name.

So Saturn and his children were the names given to the all of the planets of the outer solar system.

Therefore, the name "Neptune" seems like a logical choice, even if you don't know the planet is blue.



Earth was not always considered a planet like the other planets. When most of the other planets were given names, The Earth was considered the center of the Universe, not just another planet. So it seems logical that it would not be named just like the other planets.

The word "Earth" comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word the means "soil", so the name for our world came from the word for "soil" -- not vice-versa.



Uranus was the Father of ALL of the gods -- so that fact that Uranus is (usually) the brightest of all of the planets makes it a fitting name, in my opinion.



The name of the god predates the discovery (and naming) of the planet by about 2000 years -- so I doubt the god was named after the planet. Nobody even knew the planet existed back when "Neptune" was considered by the Romans to be the god of the oceans.


[edit on 10/19/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]