Earth & SkyGreek → English
Triton
/ˈtraɪtən/noun
The son of Poseidon, a merman who calms the waves with a conch, and the largest moon of Neptune.
The Greek roots
Τρίτων
Trítōn
Triton, sea god
Literally: “the sea god, Poseidon's herald”
Follow a root:Τρίτων1 word
The story of the word
William Lassell found the moon seventeen days after Neptune itself was identified in 1846, but it went unnamed for decades; Flammarion proposed Triton in 1880 and the name only became standard in the twentieth century. The moon orbits backwards, which means it was captured rather than formed there, and Voyager 2 photographed nitrogen geysers on it in 1989. The god's own name is old and its origin is unsettled, though it clearly belongs with Amphitrite.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
Triton is colder than Pluto and still manages to erupt.