From Greek mythology, Ladon was the dragon who guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides.
Ladon is a name pulled straight from the deep well of Greek mythology, and it carries the resonance of ancient things. In Hesiod's telling, Ladon was the immortal dragon — sometimes described as having a hundred heads, each speaking in a different voice — who coiled endlessly around the tree of the Hesperides, guarding the golden apples that Hera received as a wedding gift. Heracles slew him (or put him to sleep, in gentler versions) as one of his celebrated Labors, and Zeus placed the dragon among the stars as the constellation Draco.
Ladon is also the name of a river in Arcadia, the pastoral highland region of Greece that became synonymous in Renaissance literature with an idealized, innocent nature. The river Ladon appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses and flows through the landscape of pastoral poetry from Virgil to Sidney. This geographical resonance gives the name a second, quieter life — not only the ferocious guardian serpent but the murmuring stream through wild flowers.
As a given name Ladon is extraordinarily rare, which is precisely its appeal for classically-minded parents seeking something singular. It sits in excellent company with other mythological revivals — Orion, Atlas, Cassian — but goes considerably further off the beaten path. A child named Ladon will spend their life explaining their name, and every explanation will be a story worth telling.