Well, "fedt" in Danish means "cool" (in the good way, as opposed to the opposite of "warm", and it also is an adjective derived from "fed" , meaning fat. So, it could mean "fatty" as an adjective, or "greasy". "Mule" in Danish also means "mule" in English. [...] But, that's a very unique way of naming a major Disney character, so, as it is just a guess from me, we'd better hope to get Ramapith's (David's) view on this, as he worked in Danish Egmont's office for several years, and probably knows the English translation of Fedtmule.
Thanks! But—"mule" in Danish actually doesn't mean mule (the animal) in English.
The Danish word for mule is muldyr.
Mule is the Danish word for maw or muzzle. So Goofy's name effectively means "fat-muzzle." And Goofy's relatives often have names ending in "-mule" as well, even when it makes them sound a little peculiar (e. g. Arizona Goof as Vildmule, wild-muzzle).
Well, "fedt" in Danish means "cool" (in the good way, as opposed to the opposite of "warm", and it also is an adjective derived from "fed" , meaning fat. So, it could mean "fatty" as an adjective, or "greasy". "Mule" in Danish also means "mule" in English. [...] But, that's a very unique way of naming a major Disney character, so, as it is just a guess from me, we'd better hope to get Ramapith's (David's) view on this, as he worked in Danish Egmont's office for several years, and probably knows the English translation of Fedtmule.
Thanks! But—"mule" in Danish actually doesn't mean mule (the animal) in English.
The Danish word for mule is muldyr.
Mule is the Danish word for maw or muzzle. So Goofy's name effectively means "fat-muzzle." And Goofy's relatives often have names ending in "-mule" as well, even when it makes them sound a little peculiar (e. g. Arizona Goof as Vildmule, wild-muzzle).
Thanks for clearing that up. I used to know that fedtmule meant fat muzzle, and that muldyr meant mule for many, many years. It's amazing (and actually very scary) how much long-term memory I have lost.
Scrooge’s butler was named “Jarvis” in another Barks story (“You Can’t Guess”, 1950). There were numerous other butlers in Barks’s stories, but almost all of them went unnamed (although I believe the butler in Scrooge’s debut appearance, “Christmas on Bear Mountain”, was named “Jeeves”.)
I share others’ dislike of “Quackmore” as a translation of “Battista”. The play on words makes no sense, and it changes the dynamic with Scrooge; he’s supposed to be Scrooge’s right hand and confidant, which is why Scrooge calls him by his first name. Albert, Bertam, Bertand or Bertie sound like better alternatives. Quackmore sounds fine as Donald’s father’s name, although I think “Quackmire” would have been funnier (as a play on the actual name Quagmire). His Dutch name is “Woerd Snater”, which is what Donald Duck was called in his earliest appearances in Dutch newspapers. A clever reference by the translator! But I digress (as usual). I also dislike Argus McSwine as the go-to name for Scrooge’s pig-faced rival; Barks gave him much funnier names in his stories, like P.J. McBrine and Boaregard Swinekopf.
I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I like a number of names far better in their Dutch translation than their English originals/alternatives. For instance, “Dora Duck” I like much better than “Elvira Duck” as Grandma Duck’s full name. While I assume that “Dora” is an uncommon name in English, I feel that a similar-sounding English name like Doris or Dorothy would have been a better fit than Elvira (and kept the alliteration). The fact that Elvira (or rather, Elviry) was used in one of those (rather boring) American Grandma Duck short stories is no reason to keep it in use, IMO. But even then, there were several stories where her first name was Abigail—why didn’t that become her default name?
“Olivia Bladgoud”, “Kitty Klatergoud” and “Goldie Glittergoud” are all Dutch translations of Glittering Goldie’s full name that I like far better than the generic “Goldie O’Gilt”.
Barks was the master of inventive character names, but he really dropped the ball with “Rockerduck”—he should have been named “Rockefeather” or “Duckefeller”!! When I first started reading stories with him in the Dutch pocket books as a kid, I wondered if his name meant that he had something to do with rock music . Some old Dutch translations give him funnier, Barksian-sounding names like Leopold Kwartjesvinder and Gijsbert Goochem, both of which I prefer over “Rockerduck”.
Miss Quackfaster’s first name was “Florence” in a Geoffrey Blum story from the 90s. An old-fashioned name like that fits the character more nicely than “Emily”, in my opinion. Not to mention that a voice actress named Florence Gill played the main character in Donald Duck’s very first appearance “The Wise Little Hen”! That gives some historic relevance to the name .
And of course, I like “Bolderbast” much better than his original name “Jones”! I bet that, if Barks had known Jones was going to become a recurring character, he would have given him a funny-sounding name like that.
Last Edit: Mar 24, 2020 12:31:55 GMT by Scroogerello
Post by Baar Baar Jinx on Mar 24, 2020 13:12:37 GMT
I know we discussed this on other threads, but "Glittering Goldie" seems like a stage name, akin to the obvious stage names that many of her co-workers went by (Snake-Hips, Glass-Eye, etc.). So perhaps Olivia Goldleaf could indeed be her real name (although I do like "O'Gilt" as well).
"Argus McSwine" seems to have been standardized under Bob Foster during the Disney Comics, Inc., era. I agree that the idea of several similar-appearing pig-faced villains with completely different first and last names is more appealing ... a sort of Duckverse equivalent of Pete in the cartoons, who played many different roles under different aliases with unclear relationships between them.
As for Scrooge's butler ... maybe his name could be "Quackbury" (a play on Richie Rich's butler Cadbury)? I'm fine that he's referred to by his last name, as is customary with butlers; Scrooge's close personal relationship with him may have developed over time, by which point the convention would have already been established. But Bertram works for me as a first name.
I'm okay with Elvira too; as Rosa suggested, if the name had been established in English, no matter how obscure the story, why not respect it unless there was reason not to (same is the case with her husband, Humperdink).
I agree with the idea of there being many different pig villains. If you look at the stories, they often have very different motives and interests, that to me they're just different people. They just happen to look the same, similar to how all Beagle Boys look the same. I'm not sure what that says (that a guy looking like that HAS to be the bad guy in Disney comics), but I prefer that to one guy who seems to suffer from a VERY split personality. And the names can be changed to fit his background.
Being Dutch myself, I naturally prefer many of the Dutch names. I mean, Leopold Kwartjesvinder is nothing short of amazing. Gijsbert Goochem is interesting, as it's definitely a derivative of Govert Goudglans/Flintheart Glomgold, but Goochem sounds like he'd be more at home as a kind of Halloween ghoul or mysterious old man (I'm thinking of the guy from this story). Bertus Bolderbast is another classic.
Nowadays, Pete's Swedish name is "Svarte-Petter" (basically Black Pete). However, before that was standardized, some stories used "Lars Långfinger" (with Långfinger meaning long or middle finger). I love that, mainly because it works wonderfully as a contrast to Goofy's name (his Swedish name being Långben (long legs)). Goofy is a silly character, as his Swedish name implies, while Pete is an evil fellow, which the middle finger-name hints to.
My head-canon is that Pete's Swedish full name is Lars-Petter Långfinger, which would include both the early name and his current one. However, in my head-canon he's an American who only speaks English, so the Swedish version doesn't really matter in the end.
For Scrooge's butler, I think I prefer "Albert Baptiste" as his full name. Albert is his Swedish name, but it works in English too (and it sounds like a "parody" of Alfred from Batman). And I guess Baptiste just sounds fitting to my ears. He looks like a "Baptiste" to me somehow.
I assume that Gijsbert Goochem is a direct translation of the German “Klaas Klever” (Carl Clever), “Goochem” being an old-timey (now rarely used) Dutch word meaning clever/shrewd/sly. Most of the old Dutch stories seem to have been translated from German—that’s how we ended up with Erika Fuchs’ “Dagobert Duck” as Scrooge’s Dutch name.
Outside of the Dutch translations, I also really like Scrooge’s name in the Italian translations: “Paperone”/“Paperon de’ Paperoni”. I know the “Paper” pun has been over-used in Italy, but Scrooge’s Italian name is particularly clever, as it’s a play on “Paper” (duck) and “Pantalone”/“Pantalon de’ Bisognosi”, a Scrooge-like character from Italy’s 16th century commedia dell’arte. I just love the fact that the Italians managed to successfully translate “Scrooge”, by using the name of a character from their own native literature with a similar characterization to the Dickens character.
For that same reason, I like Scrooge’s name in the old French translations: “Harpagon Picsou”, “Harpagon” being the miserly main character from one of Molière’s most famous comedy pieces “L’Avare”, and (like “Scrooge” in English) a word that has since become synonymous with “miser/cheapskate” in the French language. It was only used in a few Barks translations though, before they switched to the current “Balthazar Picsou”.
That said again—the main reason the "foreign" Disney editors didn't call Scrooge's butler Jeeves (or similar) is that as early as 1964, Disney's overseas editors were already calling John D. Rockerduck's butler Jeeves, and the name has stuck with Rockerduck's butler in English since, even in recent books I've worked on.
As for Quackmore, the name was coined by Gary Leach at Gladstone, who felt that because some stories already gave Scrooge a dogfaced butler with a duckish name at his mansion (Duckworth), the different dogfaced butler at his money bin needed a duckish name to match!
Jonathan Gray was the first to give Quackmore his first name of Albert, borrowing it from the Danes—but I don't think it's a "generic" name at all, as others say above. It makes me think of Albert the Alligator and Albert Ramsbottom, two instantly interesting fictional characters, even if Scrooge's harried bin-butler is nothing like them.
Ah, it's satisfying to know why Battista was dubbed Quackmore. Though it strikes me as distinctly odd to copy what many of us see as a misstep: a duckish name for a dogfaced butler! But Gary Leach *did* do a lot of stuff I'm grateful for....
And sure enough, there "Jeeves" is in the INDUCKS characters list, as the "secretary" (they say) of Rockerduck. I shoulda looked it up earlier in this discussion.
I don't mind Albert as the butler's first name, I just don't like it as the one name by which he's called. Albert Something--where "Something" is not duckish, please!
I also dislike Argus McSwine as the go-to name for Scrooge’s pig-faced rival; Barks gave him much funnier names in his stories, like P.J. McBrine and Boaregard Swinekopf.
I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I like a number of names far better in their Dutch translation than their English originals/alternatives. For instance, “Dora Duck” I like much better than “Elvira Duck” as Grandma Duck’s full name. While I assume that “Dora” is an uncommon name in English, I feel that a similar-sounding English name like Doris or Dorothy would have been a better fit than Elvira (and kept the alliteration). The fact that Elvira (or rather, Elviry) was used in one of those (rather boring) American Grandma Duck short stories is no reason to keep it in use, IMO. But even then, there were several stories where her first name was Abigail—why didn’t that become her default name?
“Olivia Bladgoud”, “Kitty Klatergoud” and “Goldie Glittergoud” are all Dutch translations of Glittering Goldie’s full name that I like far better than the generic “Goldie O’Gilt”.
Barks was the master of inventive character names, but he really dropped the ball with “Rockerduck”—he should have been named “Rockefeather” or “Duckefeller”!! When I first started reading stories with him in the Dutch pocket books as a kid, I wondered if his name meant that he had something to do with rock music . Some old Dutch translations give him funnier, Barksian-sounding names like Leopold Kwartjesvinder and Gijsbert Goochem, both of which I prefer over “Rockerduck”.
Miss Quackfaster’s first name was “Florence” in a Geoffrey Blum story from the 90s. An old-fashioned name like that fits the character more nicely than “Emily”, in my opinion. Not to mention that a voice actress named Florence Gill played the main character in Donald Duck’s very first appearance “The Wise Little Hen”! That gives some historic relevance to the name .
And of course, I like “Bolderbast” much better than his original name “Jones”! I bet that, if Barks had known Jones was going to become a recurring character, he would have given him a funny-sounding name like that.
--I agree that the various pig villains should be given different, funny names.
--I like the sound of "Elvira Duck" just fine, and I think it fits the character. Old-fashioned, strong. Didn't Rosa say at some point that he didn't know about the stories where her name is "Abigail" when he went with "Elvira"? In any case, the name Abigail has come back into use in the USA, so it doesn't sound nearly as old-fashioned to us as Elvira. Plenty of young "Abby's" around, if you're in a mostly-white area. Usage peaked in 2005: 3,795 per million babies.
By the way...the INDUCKS character page for Grandma Duck doesn't list "Elvira Duck" as an occasional name for her--just "Elviry" from WDC 12104. Nor does it list "Elvira Coot" under "alternative and old names," though it does list, e.g., "Elvire Ecoutum (la jeunesse de Picsou)" as a French alternative name. Nor does it list "Abigail" as an occasional or alternative English name. Somebody want to edit that?
--On the subject of "old-fashioned" names: when was Miss Quackfaster given the first name "Emily"? Because that name *was* thought of as old-fashioned at least through the 1970's, when it gradually began to return to current usage. Peak was in the 1990's, 6,000 per million babies at one point. I do think that "Emily Quackfaster" is a LOT more euphonious than "Florence Quackfaster," though.
--I totally agree that Barks missed out when he didn't name Rockerduck "Rockefeather"--that *is* his name in my headcanon! I so often now read my Disney comics in other languages where the characters have different names which I have to mentally change to the English name, it's easy enough for me to mentally change even a name established in English usage.
--I also agree that "Bolderbast" is much better than "Jones."
"Jeeves" was the cultists' generic name for a butler in 19th and early 20th Century English language and literary tradition. I assume that was his last (family) name. Barks never had Scrooge have a butler used in enough panels to give him a name. Jack Bradbury had Scrooge living in a mansion in several stories, and gave him the same butler in, at least, a few of them. I believe he called him "Jeeves" in one, or two of them, and "Jeems" in one. So, I thought the "Foreign" Disney editors should have used "Jeeves".
Rob, Jack Bradbury never (or almost never) wrote the Disney stories he drew, so any name given to a Bradbury-drawn butler would have come from the stories' writers or editors.
That said, "Jeems" is really a Barks Scrooge butler-name! It's in his "Wispy Willie."
That said again—the main reason the "foreign" Disney editors didn't call Scrooge's butler Jeeves (or similar) is that as early as 1964, Disney's overseas editors were already calling John D. Rockerduck's butler Jeeves, and the name has stuck with Rockerduck's butler in English since, even in recent books I've worked on.
As for Quackmore, the name was coined by Gary Leach at Gladstone, who felt that because some stories already gave Scrooge a dogfaced butler with a duckish name at his mansion (Duckworth), the different dogfaced butler at his money bin needed a duckish name to match!
Jonathan Gray was the first to give Quackmore his first name of Albert, borrowing it from the Danes—but I don't think it's a "generic" name at all, as others say above. It makes me think of Albert the Alligator and Albert Ramsbottom, two instantly interesting fictional characters, even if Scrooge's harried bin-butler is nothing like them.
It's been a while since I read it and I no longer have access to a copy of it, but didn't Scrooge have a chauffeur named Quackmore in The Egg and Why? Maybe that name was just added in a later reprinting and wasn't in the original. I can't remember which version I read, though I guess it was probably the 2007 American printing in Uncle Scrooge. Was the name "Quackmore" inserted in that version, or was it present in Kinney's original 1967 script?
No matter what I say or do, know that Jesus loves you.
As for Quackmore, the name was coined by Gary Leach at Gladstone, who felt that because some stories already gave Scrooge a dogfaced butler with a duckish name at his mansion (Duckworth), the different dogfaced butler at his money bin needed a duckish name to match!
On another thread, we speculated where the English name for Scrooge's butler ("Quackmore") came from without resolution. I'm glad we finally have the answer (although I believe the name was coined in the Gemstone era, not the Gladstone era). But surely Leach knew that Quackmore was already being used for another major (though inactive) character ... I just wish he had not decided to reuse it (in my personal headcanon, the character's name isn't "Quackmore", but I'm not sure yet what it is. Apparently unlike most others on this forum, I don't mind that it's duck-related; I just want it to be unique).
I'm perfectly happy with "Jones". It's nondescript and commonplace, which adds to its charm, and somehow what you would expect a neighbor of Donald to be named. I agree about Rockerduck/Rockefeather though. Barks' one big missed opportunity!
For that same reason, I like Scrooge’s name in the old French translations: “Harpagon Picsou”, “Harpagon” being the miserly main character from one of Molière’s most famous comedy pieces “L’Avare”, and (like “Scrooge” in English) a word that has since become synonymous with “miser/cheapskate” in the French language. It was only used in a few Barks translations though, before they switched to the current “Balthazar Picsou”.
Oh, that's cool! I wish they'd stuck with that! I'm biased in favor of L'Avare due to the Louis de Funès film version -- who was in turn influenced by Donald Duck in his acting! I do like how Glomgold and Rockerduck reflect Scrooge in French: Gripsou and Flairsou. (A sou being a French penny.) Rockerduck was always the more 'flashy' and 'modern' of the three umptillionaires in my mind, too.
I’m quite fond of ”Indiana Jöns”, the Swedish name for Indiana Pipps/Arizona Goof. Jöns is a real name and a cognate to Jones, but has also become an insult used for people acting slightly stupid, unserious or, if you will, goofy.
I’m quite fond of ”Indiana Jöns”, the Swedish name for Indiana Pipps/Arizona Goof. Jöns is a real name and a cognate to Jones, but has also become an insult used for people acting slightly stupid, unserious or, if you will, goofy.
Is "Jöns" connected to the full Swedish name of Goofy being Jan Långben? It sounds like it might be. Here in Norway Arizona Goof is named "Indiana Beinson", obviously because Goofy's name is "Langbein" (long legs).
I’m quite fond of ”Indiana Jöns”, the Swedish name for Indiana Pipps/Arizona Goof. Jöns is a real name and a cognate to Jones, but has also become an insult used for people acting slightly stupid, unserious or, if you will, goofy.
Is "Jöns" connected to the full Swedish name of Goofy being Jan Långben? It sounds like it might be. Here in Norway Arizona Goof is named "Indiana Beinson", obviously because Goofy's name is "Langbein" (long legs).
I think it’s mainly a pun on Jones, but who knows. Jan has of course the same origin as Jöns and Jones.