Variant spelling of Karen, Scandinavian form of Katherine, meaning pure.
Karon is a spelling variant of Karen, itself the Scandinavian short form of Katherine — rooted in the Greek Aikaterine, a name whose etymology has been disputed for centuries. Competing theories derive it from the Greek katharos (pure), from the goddess Hecate, or from an earlier non-Greek name that simply acquired a Greek phonetic overlay. By the time the name traveled north into Denmark and Scandinavia through medieval Christian missionary activity, it had been domesticated to Karen and its close cousins, losing any connection to its contested origins and becoming simply a strong, clean Scandinavian given name.
Karen as a name achieved extraordinary popularity in the mid-20th century English-speaking world — among the top five girls' names in the United States through much of the 1950s and 1960s — and Karon represents one of the phonetic spelling variations that parents adopted to distinguish their daughters within that crowded cohort. The addition of an 'o' slightly alters the vowel quality in some pronunciations while visually differentiating the name on paper. In Scandinavian countries themselves, Karon appears as a legitimate alternative spelling with its own small tradition of use.
The cultural trajectory of Karen-as-name underwent a dramatic and unfortunate reversal in the 2010s when "Karen" became internet slang for a particular type of entitled behavior, effectively retiring the name for most contemporary parents. Karon, worn slightly differently on the page, exists in a curious interstitial space — close enough to carry some of that cultural noise, distinct enough that bearers can reasonably claim a separate identity. For women named Karon in the mid-20th century, the name simply carries the warmth of an era when it was genuinely beloved, with no ironic freight attached.