Triton is the common name

Common name

A common name of a taxon or organism is a name in general use within a community; it is often contrasted with the scientific name for the same organism...

 given to a number of very large sea snail

Snail

Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

s, predatory marine

Marine (ocean)

Marine is an umbrella term. As an adjective it is usually applicable to things relating to the sea or ocean, such as marine biology, marine ecology and marine geology...

 gastropods in the genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 Charonia.

The name "triton" is also often applied as part of the common name, to other, much smaller sea snails of other genera within the same family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

, Ranellidae

Ranellidae

Ranellidae, common name the triton shells or tritons, is a taxonomic family of small to very large predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the clade Littorinimorpha.-Subfamilies:...

.

Tritons are named after the Greek god

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

 Triton

Triton (mythology)

Triton is a mythological Greek god, the messenger of the big sea. He is the son of Poseidon, god of the sea, and Amphitrite, goddess of the sea, whose herald he is...

, who was the son of Poseidon

Poseidon

Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...

, god of the sea.

The shell of the giant triton Charonia tritonis

Charonia tritonis

Charonia tritonis, common name Triton's trumpet, is a species of very large sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Ranellidae, the tritons.Also see Charonia or Triton .-Distribution:...

 (Linnaeus, 1758), which lives in the Indo-Pacific

Indo-Pacific

The Indo-Pacific is a biogeographic region of the Earth's seas, comprising the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the seas connecting the two in the general area of Indonesia...

 faunal zone, can grow to over half a metre

Metre

The metre , symbol m, is the base unit of length in the International System of Units . Originally intended to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Earth's equator to the North Pole , its definition has been periodically refined to reflect growing knowledge of metrology...

 (20 inch

Inch

An inch is the name of a unit of length in a number of different systems, including Imperial units, and United States customary units. There are 36 inches in a yard and 12 inches in a foot...

es) in length.

One slightly smaller but still very large species, Charonia variegata

Charonia variegata

Charonia variegata, common name the Atlantic triton, is a species of predatory sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Ranellidae, the triton snails, triton shells or tritons.-Distribution:This species has a wide distribution...

 (Lamarck, 1816), lives in the western Atlantic, from North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

 to Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

.
Unlike pulmonate and opistobranch gastropods, tritons are not hermaphrodite

Hermaphrodite

In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...

s; they have separate sex

Sex

In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...

es and undergo sexual reproduction

Sexual reproduction

Sexual reproduction is the creation of a new organism by combining the genetic material of two organisms. There are two main processes during sexual reproduction; they are: meiosis, involving the halving of the number of chromosomes; and fertilization, involving the fusion of two gametes and the...

 with internal fertilization.