Why was Neptune rather than Uranus chosen as an archetype? The largest exoplanets are typically called Jupiter-like planets, or hot/cold Jupiters. Since Jupiter is the largest most massive planet in our Solar system, it makes sense that it would be chosen as an analog. For intermediate-size exoplanets, Neptune is used as an analog (e.g. 1).
Neptune and Uranus are both roughly the same size and mass. So why is Neptune rather than Uranus used as the archetype of intermediate-mass planets?
Did someone call an exoplanet a Neptune-like planet, choosing Neptune over Uranus for no particular reason, and then everyone else followed suit? Or is there a fundamental difference between the two planets that makes Neptune a better analog?
NASA distinguishes four types of exoplanets: Gas Giant, Super-Earth, Neptune-like, and Terrestrial. The question asks why ice planets termed &quot;Neptune-like&quot; and not &quot;Uranus-like&quot;.
Let's start with some statistics: What is curious, that (at least according to scholar.google.com), intially more icy exoplanets were termed Uranus like planet rather than Neptune like planet before eventually, the latter term started growing:
1980 to 1990

2 citations with Uranus like planet
0 citations with Neptune like planet

1990 to 1995

3 citations with Uranus like planet
5 citations with Neptune like planet

1995 to 2000

2 citations with Uranus like planet
4 citations with Neptune like planet

2000 to 2005

4 citations with Uranus like planet
12 citations with Neptune like planet

2005 to 2010

4 citations with Uranus like planet
43 citations with Neptune like planet

This supports the hypothesis that it was a &quot;vote with the feet&quot;, rather than something coordinated, much like initial density fluctuations in a protoplanetary disk which might serve as the seed for a planet, or not.
@uhoh already suspected this in a comment, plus also mentions that the pronouncaction of Uranus might lead to unintended puns when talking about &quot;planets like ...&quot;. It is sometimes these linguistic pecularities which make a brand successful and another one not.

I'm 100% sure that

it's because of the way Uranus sounds when said out loud, and
the decision was made in the collective unconscious, we'll never find a smoking gun, or a...


After all, there quite some similarities between Uranus and Neptune, see e.g. the concise comparison between the two planets at WolframAlpha, although there is also reasoning Why Neptune and Uranus are different.