Neptune. . . . . . Huh? Oh,Neptune to the Romans, Poseidon to the Greeks, god of the Sea and Earthquakes, which he caused by splitting boulders with his trident. Worshiped especially in connection with navigation, as the god of fresh waters was worshiped as a fertility god. Under the name Hippo, the god of horses and other things equine, father of Pegasus the winged horse. (Apparently them fertility rituals sometimes got out of hand.) Brother of Zeus, Hades and Hera. Husband of Amphitrite, who bore him Triton, and by others he fathered more sons, usually strong, brutal men like Orion or monsters like Polyphemus, the one eyed cyclops. Neptune was known for his excentracy,contrariness, temper and vengful nature. He got into an argument with the early Trojans and sent a sea monster to attack them. Later was on the Greek side in the Trojan war, but had a grudge against the bragart Odysseus ( Ulysses to the Romans), especially after Odysseus blinded Polyphemus, (the original Pop-Eye?) and took an active role in causing Ody to get lost and wander the seas for years. Neptune , the planet, was not known to the Romans or Greeks, but was discovered in 1846. Since the other planets already had Romanized names of Greek gods the co-discoverers eventually settled on the name Neptune. Maybe they were not fans of the Trojans, Ulysses or USC. Neptune is usually considered to be the eighth planet, but because of its eccentric orbit it sometimes is farther from the sun than the ninth, Pluto, which has a certifiably insane orbit. Maybe that eccentracy had something to do with the name. The moons of Neptune, from the nearest to the planet out, include ;(The first six moons were discovered by NASA's Voyager 2 mission, 1989 and given names at least connected to Neptune.) Naiad- or fresh water nymph, some of whom are offspring of Neptune Thalassa- personification, but not a godess of the sea, creator of sea life. Despina- daughter of Neptune by Demeter, the Earth goddess Galatea- a neriad, sea nymph, girl friend of Polyphemus Larissa- daughter of Pelasgus, (who is not the same Pelasgus as the ancestor of Pelasges, who were the mythical first people of Greece and who's name may mean People of the Sea, so maybe the namers just got confused.) Proteus-a prophetic sea divinity, son of either Poseidon or Oceanus.( The two are not to be confused, Oceanus was the father of all rivers and became the god of the ocean outside the Pillars of Hercules, Heracles, or the Atlantic ocean.) Proteus used to hang out on the Egyptian island of Pharos. ( Not to be confused with Pharaoh, who also used to hang out in Egypt. I told you Neptune was contrary.) Triton- ( discovered in 1846) Neptunes son( not to be confused with his triple tined earthquake causing shrimp fork )who apparently inherited his fathers contraryness by rotating backwards, or retrograde. That is he rises in the west and sets in the east, the only moon in the solar system to do so. Nereid- ( 1949) The neriads are the sea nymphs, daughters of Neptune. As might be expected, Nereid has the most eccentric orbit in the solar system. The distance from Nereid to Neptune varies from about 1,353,600 kilometers (841,100 miles) to over seven times as far, 9,623,700 kilometers (5,980,200 miles). In fact it might not be a real moon at all, but instead a captured asteroid or even part of a comet. But then, Neptune his own self had a hard time remembering who were his own kids and by whom. i think there have been some other moons found since, but I can't remember. Sometimes just trying to think causes me to have a head quake. BTW, despite the fact of Triton's retrograde orbit and what ya see up there at the top of the Bag's Neptune page "Eighth from the sun, and with a retrograde orbit" Neptune does NOT have a retrograde orbit. It does not even have a retrograde rotation.

The names Janus and Oceanus were both proposed for the new planet, but Neptune was settled on quite quickly. The Roman god Neptune was a very ancient figure. His name means 'grandson' and corresponds to both the Irish sea god Nechtan (earlier Neptonos) and the Indo-Iraman Apam Napat 'Grandson of the Waters'. He seems to have originally been a god of oil wells, or rather the natural petroleum springs of the Caucasus, which the Persians called the Mountain of the Grandson. The Celts and Romans transferred him to the sea, while the Indians eventually forgot him altogether. But the Irish remembered that Nechtan had a dangerous magic well, whilst in India the Veda had described him as living underwater yet 'clad in lightning' and 'giving off light without fuel'. Can it be chance that the planet has petroleum among its rulerships? But apart from the sea and oil, none of the things ruled by Neptune can be linked to myths of the god. The first published account of its influence by John Ackroyd (in the 1890 reprint of W. J. Simmonite's Complete Arcana of Astral Philosophy) makes no reference to mythology; his conclusions were based purely on the study of the planet in nativities. The Romans equated Neptune to the Greek Poseidon, but the latter was not originally a sea god at all. His name means simply 'husband of Da' - i.e., Demeter or Damater, 'mother Da' - and he was a god of the earth, as shown by his responsibility for earthquakes. Like his wife, he was also associated with horses. Poseidon thus has nothing to do with the astrological Neptune. http://www.skyscript.co.uk/neptune.html After the discovery of Uranus, it was noticed that its orbit was not as it should be in accordance with Newton's laws. It was therefore predicted that another more distant planet must be perturbing Uranus' orbit. Neptune was first observed by Galle and d'Arrest on 1846 Sept 23 very near to the locations independently predicted by Adams and Le Verrier from calculations based on the observed positions of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. An international dispute arose between the English and French (though not, apparently between Adams and Le Verrier personally) over priority and the right to name the new planet; they are now jointly credited with Neptune's discovery. Subsequent observations have shown that the orbits calculated by Adams and Le Verrier diverge from Neptune's actual orbit fairly quickly. Had the search for the planet taken place a few years earlier or later it would not have been found anywhere near the predicted location. http://www.physlink.com/education/AskExperts/ae347.cfm The Romans named the five planets closest to the sun after their most important gods. These were the only planets that were bright enough for them to see. Later, when telscopes were used, other planets were discovered. Astronomers decided to continue naming the Planets after Roman Gods. Neptune, a blueish planet, was named after the Roman god of the Sea. http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/.../neptune_name.shtml In 1613, Galileo Galilei first observed what he took to be a star close to Jupiter. On the next two nights this "star" had moved with respect to another true star. Then the object fell from his field of view, and bad weather prevented Galileo from observing it again. He would never know the magnitude of his oversight.[7] In 1781, William Herschel discovered Neptune's twin Uranus. But astronomers noticed that that planet's orbit deviated from the strict Newtonian model. John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier independently predicted another planet beyond Uranus to account for these irregular motions. Though Adams never published his predictions, Le Verrier did. Johann Gottfried Galle and his student Heinrich L. d'Arrest used those predictions to help him search the sky, and he found the eighth planet within one degree of where Le Verrier's numbers predicted it to be.[8] A protracted dispute between the British and French arose as to the naming rights and the proposed name of the planet.[7] Galle at one point proposed naming the planet after Le Verrier. Eventually, however, the community of astronomers chose the name Neptune, for the Roman god of the sea and brother of Jupiter. They also chose as a symbol for Neptune the trident, the three-pronged sceptre that the mythical Neptune carried. In fact, the Adams and Le Verrier predictions would not have held much longer, and the best reason why Galle found Neptune when he did is that he acted very soon after Le Verrier published his predictions, when they would still hold.[7 http://www.conservapedia.com/Neptune this is from a previous answer of mine.