Charon Charon In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon (; Greek Χάρων) is the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years. In the catabasis mytheme, heroes – such as
Charon (moon) Future", naming them , , and . After its discovery, Charon was originally known by the temporary designation S/1978 P 1, according to the then recently instituted convention. On June 24, 1978, Christy first suggested the name "Charon" as a scientific-sounding version of his wife Charlene's nickname, "Char". Although colleagues at the Naval Observatory proposed "Persephone", Christy stuck with "Charon" after discovering that it coincidentally refers to a Greek mythological figure: Charon ( or ; Greek Χάρων) is the ferryman of the dead, closely associated in myth with the god Hades, whom the Romans identified with their god Pluto. The