Donald Duck Being Canonly Named For Sir Donald McDuck

[seymour747millplane]

I read somewhere that, due to has short temper, Donald Fauntleroy Duck has his first name in honor of Sir Donald McDuck, who also has a short temper.

Can you find any sources and comics that mentions this?

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Aug 17, 2018 23:55:49 GMT seymour747millplane said:

I read somewhere that, due to has short temper, Donald Fauntleroy Duck has his first name in honor of Sir Donald McDuck, who also has a short temper.

Can you find any sources and comics that mentions this?

I thought that would be a nice touch as well, but Life of Scrooge clearly established that Quackmore came up with the name, not Hortense. Therefore a McDuck-related inspiration seems unlikely.

[muggyruglugg]

There was a "Black" Donald McDuck in an early version of The Last of the Clan McDuck.

[Lieju]

Aug 18, 2018 1:54:32 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Aug 17, 2018 23:55:49 GMT seymour747millplane said:

I read somewhere that, due to has short temper, Donald Fauntleroy Duck has his first name in honor of Sir Donald McDuck, who also has a short temper.

Can you find any sources and comics that mentions this?

I thought that would be a nice touch as well, but Life of Scrooge clearly established that Quackmore came up with the name, not Hortense. Therefore a McDuck-related inspiration seems unlikely.

Wasn't Hortense opposed to the name? Maybe because it had some family assosiations.

(Perhaps Hortense mentioned the relative to Quackmore when they were talking about their families, and he thought it was a cool name)

EDIT: At least in some languages Donald has the same or modernized version of Andold Wild Duck's name, so he might be named after him too.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Aug 18, 2018 8:53:50 GMT Lieju said:

Aug 18, 2018 1:54:32 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

(Perhaps Hortense mentioned the relative to Quackmore when they were talking about their families, and he thought it was a cool name)

That's possible, although somewhat circular. It's strange that Rosa, who created Sir Donald McDuck and gave him a foul temper, clearly as a setup to explain Donald Duck's name and personality, chose to abandon the premise himself later on (or at least, make it not as straightforward as it could be). Then again, Sir Donald was dropped from the final version of Life of Scrooge, so perhaps there was some underlying reason. Has Rosa ever been asked about this?

Posted by muggyruglugg

There was a "Black" Donald McDuck in an early version of The Last of the Clan McDuck.

Aren't Sir Donald McDuck and "Black" Donald the same character? Additionally, there's a "modern" Donald McDuck, "the nephew of Scrooge's grandfather Titus", from whom our Donald may also have gotten his name (if you ignore the insinuation that Quackmore came up with the name based on some factor from his side of the family).

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Aug 18, 2018 15:30:57 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

That's possible, although somewhat circular. It's strange that Rosa, who created Sir Donald McDuck and gave him a foul temper, clearly as a setup to explain Donald Duck's name and personality, chose to abandon the premise himself later on (or at least, make it not as straightforward as it could be). Then again, Sir Donald was dropped from the final version of Life of Scrooge, so perhaps there was some underlying reason. Has Rosa ever been asked about this?

As far as I know, Don Rosa deleted the "clan history" prologue from Last of Clan McDuck when Byron Erickson pointed out to him that he was supposed to be writing the biography of Scrooge McDuck, not expounding page upon page on the history of the clan in general. He's never indicated that he doesn't consider the history therein canonical anymore; indeed, Locksley McDuck, also a character original to The History of Clan McDuck, makes a cameo in The New Laird of Clan McDuck. 

That being said, Black Donald McDuck has always stuck out to me like a sore thumb as the only case he created of an ancestor that seems right out of the Italian tradition — a "historical counterpart" to a modern-day regular, complete with similar relationship to another historical lookalike (Kevin McJones). The only other case of this that Rosa used is Matey McDuck, and not only was that Barks's decision and not his, he didn't make him act too much like Scrooge when he used him in Laird.

Also, I'll come out and say it: seymour747millplane : "canonly" is an abomination of a word. The correct form is canonically. The word canon (which is actually a noun; the adjective is supposed to be "canonical") has been used as an adjective and I'm powerless to stop that, but "canonly" is going one step too far. You correct that or I'll summon the ghost of Lemony Snicket's Josephine Anwhistle so that she may glower at you with utmost disapproval. (…Kidding. But still. Please correct.) 

[Ramapith]

For what it’s worth, Rosa’s Black Donald McDuck business is actually described as canon in one of the new DuckTales episodes, when discussing the Clan McDuck’s history with golf...

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Aug 18, 2018 18:04:59 GMT Ramapith said:

For what it’s worth, Rosa’s Black Donald McDuck business is actually described as canon in one of the new DuckTales episodes, when discussing the Clan McDuck’s history with golf...

True, and I'd be willing to bet that this is why we've had no less then two threads about that obscure character in the last month. But as you say, it doesn't mean much. DT17 is a parallel universe, and they'd be within their rights to bring back Grandma Duck's cut Don Rosa Dawson City backstory if that crossed their mind, without it informing the canonicty of that thing at all in the Prime Universe. 

[juicymcduck]

In Marco Rota's story "Paperino e la notte del saraceno" ("The Night of the Saracen"), Donald says he was named after a very distant ancestor of his, a medieval Saracen pirate named Don al-Din.



In another story by Rota, namely "From Egg to Duck", Grandma names him so because (at least in the French version) Scrooge says he will become as round as a DONut if he keeps eating that much (see picture below).

[djnyr]

As always, I resist efforts to stick the Ducks into any "canon" or real-world timeline, but I have to observe that if we're taking a Rosa-ish view of things, Donald is an archetypal Scottish Highlander name ("Ronald and Donald" are used in many old Scottish songs as shorthand for Highlanders in general, the way "Pat and Mike" used to be used for Irishmen), so it would make absolute sense for Donald Duck's first name to have been handed down from an ancestor on the McDuck side.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Aug 19, 2018 10:39:24 GMT juicymcduck said:

In Marco Rota's story "Paperino e la notte del saraceno" ("The Night of the Saracen"), Donald says he was named after a very distant ancestor of his, a medieval Saracen pirate named Don al-Din.

'ts the other way around, actually: the French version of From Egg to Duck is accurate to Rota's original, whereas the American panels you quoted of Night of the Saraceen were altered. In the original, Donald does not even suggest that Don Al-Din was the ducks' alleged ancestor, let alone that Donald was named for him. 

[juicymcduck]

I remember the French versio of "Night of the Saracen" saying the exact same thing, though.