# Whence Pluto's moon "Charon"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 22, 2022, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638 "2022-06-22T15:56:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/1 "2022-06-22T15:56:25Z")
Back in the day science fiction writers fixed upon the name Persephone for any moon that might eventually be discovered circling Pluto. But it was not to be- we got Charon. How did Persephone lose out? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/2 "2022-06-22T15:59:38Z")
Because the discoverer’s wife was called Charlene, and he got dibs. > 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 (moon) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_(moon)#Name) As an interesting corollary, this etymology is used as justification for pronouncing it with a soft “sh”, rather than the hard “k” of the Greek. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/3 "2022-06-22T16:00:32Z")
Dang! Ninjaed! (Link removed) Wikipedia says Charon fit as a tribute to the discoverer’s wife, as well as being a mythological figure related to the real of the dead, so he ignored the people saying Persephone would be better. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/4 "2022-06-22T16:35:02Z")
And countless school children thank him for choosing Charon since Persephone is tricky to spell and even trickier to pronounce. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/5 "2022-06-22T16:39:03Z")
They’ve had four more chances to use Persephone, but went with Nix, Hydra, Styx, and Kerberos for Pluto II - V. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/6 "2022-06-22T16:56:08Z")
Personally, I think they should have gone with Goofy. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/7 "2022-06-22T16:56:35Z")
Persephone is a better name for the hypothetical ‘tenth’ (now ninth) outer planet as Queen of the Underworld, overseeing Kuiper Belt Objects. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/8 "2022-06-22T17:02:31Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Personally, I think they should have gone with Goofy. That’s fucking crazy! And I can’t help it: Persephone will always be in my head as pronounced “Percy Phone” If they wanted is pronounced Per sef inny they should spell it that way. My sister See ob han agrees it is the epi tome of bad spelling. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/9 "2022-06-22T17:06:19Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Persephone will always be in my head as pronounced “Percy Phone” If they wanted is pronounced Per sef inny they should spell it that way. My sister See ob han agrees it is the epi tome of bad spelling. Not everyone is as good at pro-no-un-sing as we are. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/10 "2022-06-22T17:21:08Z")
It’s almost like the name isn’t originally English or something ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/11 "2022-06-22T18:18:46Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > If they wanted is pronounced Per sef inny they should spell it that way. And if they wanted it pronounced “Persephone”, then they should have spelled it that way. Oh, wait, they did. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/12 "2022-06-22T22:58:09Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Personally, I think they should have gone with Goofy. What a Mickey Mouse name! And you know Pluto isn’t a real planet; it’s a dog planet! Personally, I didn’t like that they called it Charon. But that’s because about a year earlier, someone had discovered [Chiron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2060_Chiron), which was the first centaur found. (Centaurs are small bodies that orbit between and among the four giant planets. Most of them will eventually become short period comets.) I thought it confuising to have two bodies with such similar names. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/13 "2022-06-23T02:35:33Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > I thought it confuising to have two bodies with such similar names. I’ll speculate that the list of humans who a) know both bodies’ names, and b) aren’t well-versed enough in astronomy to easily keep them straight, is a very short list. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/14 "2022-06-23T02:48:19Z")
The trouble with “Persephone” is it sounds like a direct competitor of the iPhone. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/15 "2022-06-23T03:07:32Z")
They would have gone with Persephone but the moon asked to talk to the IAU’s manager. Clearly a Charon ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/16 "2022-06-23T03:08:25Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Personally, I think they should have gone with Goofy. Mork [Robin Williams]: “[Oh, don’t ever go to Pluto; it’s a Mickey Mouse planet!](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/a0e83da3-5e8d-4586-b633-88c30c2bdadb)” ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/17 "2022-06-23T03:45:57Z")
A much loved flat Earther meme, [![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJ4ejHkUsAAEAnm.jpg) ](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJ4ejHkUsAAEAnm.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/18 "2022-06-23T04:02:23Z")
And Charon was discovered exactly 44 years ago today. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/19 "2022-06-23T12:28:29Z")
One (gadfly) astronomer [proposed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronus#Astronomy) “Chronos” as the name for Pluto. Which would have made a “Chronos”/“Charon” pairing interesting. OTOH, it probably would have reinforced the “Chronos”/“Cronus” confusion. Which is why Father Time (Chronos) wields a sickle (Cronus). ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638/20 "2022-06-23T12:37:57Z")
Hard to post to SDMB when you’re 40 AU away. Need really good wi-fi. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-plutos-moon-charon/966638.md?page=2)