Scrooge McDuck's (and families) names worldwide?

[Zantaf]

May 6, 2017 15:57:41 GMT drakeborough said:

May 6, 2017 14:34:42 GMT Minotaur said:

100% sure Rosa was aware of the name "Abigail", at least in the later years. He mentioned that name when he explained his tree in Don Rosa Library.

That's interesting. Can someone upload a copy of the text that introduces the family tree? I only know of this version, and here Rosa didn't mention the name Abigail.

May 6, 2017 14:34:42 GMT Minotaur said:

95% sure he always chose to stick with the first name used, no matter how rare it was used. It was the case for Della's name as well.

Well, in this case Rosa chose Della over Dumbella because the latter sounded stupid, and this has nothing to do with the fact that the newspaper comic using Della predates the animated short using Dumbella by few months: even in an alternate universe where the animated short predated the newspaper comic, I'm pretty sure that he would have still chosen Della over Dumbella.

As for Barks' Thelma... well, that name never appeared in a comic or cartoon (unlike Della and Dumbella), and was more like a placeholder name (Barks didn't remember her original name, and he couldn't google it... in the 1950's!) than a conscious name change. Plus, Della Duck sounds better than Thelma Duck. So, yes, in this case he chose the first name used.

May 6, 2017 14:47:22 GMT Zantaf said:

As I stated in my post above, Battista's English name became Quackmore in the story The Bronze Gate (I TL 2423-3)
(Donald Duck Adventures (Gemstone) # 16, January 2006). 

Oh, now I see it. Your message was published when I was writing my last one (which took a long time as it was overly long), so I didn't notice yours.

According to Inducks, these are the first four stories with Battista that were published in the USA:

1) The Old West Diary of Goofalo Bill (I TL 1780-AP), Goofy Adventures 7 (December 1990)
2) The Money Ocean (I AT 215-A), Uncle Scrooge 266 (May 1992)
3) Magica's Hot Plot (H 98287), Uncle Scrooge 332 (July 21, 2004)
4) The Bronze Gate (I TL 2423-3), Donald Duck Adventures (Gemstone) 16 (January 2006)

So, you say that the third story calls him Albert and the fourth story calls him Quackmore. Is he called by name in the first and second story, or he is unnamed? And do we know who translated "The Bronze Gate"?

EDIT: I see that Baar Baar Jinx already asked the same question, and Zantaf already answered "Unfortunately there are no translation or dialogue credits."

As for "Magica's Hot Plot", you say he is called Albert, and an Inducks scan of the first page confirms this is true. I also see that in the orginal version he is called James, despite the fact that Battista's official Dutch name is Bertus. Well, Inducks also lists three alternate Dutch names (Albert, James and Van Stoetewolf): the name James is listed as having appeared only in the Dutch translation of one story (I TL 1886-A, published in 1992 in both Italy and the Netherlands), but these lists are often incomplete, and indeed this one is incomplete since we just saw that at least one story (Magica's Hot Plot) is missing. It may also debated whether he is meant to be Battista since he is a bit different from his Italian counterpart, but he is similar enough to be him, and the difference would be caused by different art styles. In the Italian translation of this story he is called Battista.

The name Albert in "Magica's Hot Plot" and in at least one Dutch translation may come from the fact that in older Italian comics Scrooge's butler was sometimes called Alberto rather than Battista. Anyway, in the English version of "Scrooge's Last Adventure" (published in Italy in 2013, and in the USA in 2016), translator Jonathan Gray and editor David Gerstein solved the contradiction of the character having two names (Albert and Quackmore) in American comics by saying that Albert is the first name and Quackmore the surname.

And speaking of names for Scrooge's butler(s): what is the original name of Scrooge's butler from this untitled 1954 story drawn by Bradbury? I only know that he is called Battista in the Italian translation.

1) "The Old West Diary of Goofalo Bill" from Goofy Adventures #7 is actually a heavily cut version of the 12th and last epissode of "The Search for the Zodiac Stone" (I TL 1780-AP) containing only the 12 pages where Goofy talks about his frontiersman ancestor Goofalo Bill. No ducks appear that episode anyway and certainly no Battista\Quackmore. The Inducks appearances list refers to characters that appear in all 12 parts of the story.

2) In Marco Rota's "The Money Ocean" (I AT 215-A) from Uncle Scrooge #266 & #267 Scrooge's butler remains unnamed but it seems to me that he is supposed to be the same as the one from "The Seven Cities of Cibola" (W US 7-02). He certainly looks a lot more like him than "Alberto" (Scrooge's first "Italian" butler) or "Battista in Cimino scripts", who I presume is Battista's\Quacmore's first incarnation before Cavazzano gave him the look that is widely used today in "Zio Paperone e il ricupero... armato" (I TL 904-AP). Here's the 10th page of the story:

What's interesting is that when the butler from W US 7-02 made his second and only other "official" (per Inducks) appearance in the U.S. in Miquel Pujol's "Passport To Lisbon" (D 92383) from Uncle Scrooge #354, he was given the name Pennyworth (localization by Don Markstein).


Back to Marco Rota, he did use the "Cavazzano" (Cavazzanesque?) Battista\Quacmore in "The Bigger Operator" (I TL 977-A), published in the U.S. in Uncle Scrooge # 410, which was first published in Italy two and a half months before "The Money Ocean":

[RobbK1]

Scrooge's butler in Bradbury's 1954 story in US Donald Duck # 37 was called "Ridgeway" (a name not ever used again for any of Scrooge's butlers).

[Zantaf]

[continued from above]

3) Here's the first page from Magica's Hot Plot (H 98287) from Uncle Scrooge #332 . Although modern (post I TL 904 AP) Battista\Quackmore has been depicted with a variety of (often crazy) hairstyles, I'm almost certain that he is supposed to be him as drawn by José Ramón Bernado.


4) Here's the 3rd page from "The Bronze Gate" (I TL 2423-3) from Donald Duck Adventures (Gemstone) #16, the first appearance of the name Quackmore in English.
 

Finally here's the second page from W DD 37-02, As you can see the butler is named Ridgeway!



So many butlers! Not to mention Edgerton from "Christmas on Bear Mountain" (W OS 178-02)!

[Zantaf]

May 6, 2017 19:11:54 GMT RobbK1 said:

Scrooge's butler in Bradbury's 1954 story in US Donald Duck # 37 was called "Ridgeway" (a name not ever used again for any of Scrooge's butlers).

It took me a while to write my follow up message and I didn't notice yours!

[Baar Baar Jinx]

The butlers in The Money Ocean and Magica's Hot Plot do not look like Battista to me. If that's what INDUCKS is saying, I must respectfully disagree. Thus, we may be looking at a situation where The Bronze Gate is both Battista's first American appearance and the first time he gets the name "Quackmore".

I've mentioned before that I dislike the name "Quackmore" for Scrooge's butler because that's Donald's father's name. Others have complained that since he's not a duck, a duck-related name is unfitting (the same argument made against DuckTales' Duckworth) but that doesn't really bother me.  I'd have been okay with something similar to Quackmore but not exactly Quackmore, like Morequack or Quackerton or Quackerbury. Just not the same name as a pre-existing character (even if not a regular character).  "Pennyworth" sounds great, but that's already Batman's butler's name.

EDIT: Upon closer inspection, I'm a bit on the fence about the butler in Magica's Hot Plot.  Would be helpful to see images other just than the one on the first page. I was under the impression that Battista wasn't as bald as this butler appears to be, but that seem to be variable. I've always thought of Battista as youthful, and the Magica's Hot Plot butler seems older, but that may have more to do with artistic style. 

[drakeborough]

Thanks to both and Zantaf and RobbK1 for all these useful info.

A few comments:

May 6, 2017 19:03:07 GMT Zantaf said:

2) In Marco Rota's "The Money Ocean" (I AT 215-A) from Uncle Scrooge #266 & #267 Scrooge's butler remains unnamed but it seems to me that he is supposed to be the same as the one from "The Seven Cities of Cibola" (W US 7-02). He certainly looks a lot more like him than "Alberto" (Scrooge's first "Italian" butler) or "Battista in Cimino scripts", who I presume is Battista's\Quacmore's first incarnation before Cavazzano gave him the look that is widely used today in "Zio Paperone e il ricupero... armato" (I TL 904-AP). Here's the 10th page of the story:

What's interesting is that when the butler from W US 7-02 made his second and only other "official" (per Inducks) appearance in the U.S. in Miquel Pujol's "Passport To Lisbon" (D 92383) from Uncle Scrooge #354, he was given the name Pennyworth (localization by Don Markstein).

We are now leaving the field of Battista's English name and venturing into the field of discussing the various butlers appearing in Scrooge's stories, which may be an interesting topic for another long discussion.

Anyway, you say "Passport To Lisbon" is the second and last "official" (per Inducks) appearance of the butler from "The Seven Cities of Cibola", and yet Inducks lists 8 appearances for him, with "Passport To Lisbon" being the 5th. This seems like an arbitrary decision, though: the unnamed butler from "Cibola" and the unnamed butler from "Passport" are not that similar, so there's no evidence they were meant to be the same character. The same thing is true for the unnamed butler from "The Money Ocean", which Inducks decided to identify as Battista.

May 6, 2017 19:27:44 GMT Zantaf said:

4) Here's the 3rd page from "The Bronze Gate" (I TL 2423-3) from Donald Duck Adventures (Gemstone) #16, the first appearance of the name Quackmore in English.

I see that he is called "Mr. Quackmore", which means that from the beginning Quackmore was meant to be his surname (as opposed to Quackmore Duck, in which Q. is a given name). So my original guess is wrong: I had though that Albert and Quackmore were both meant to be Battista's given name in English, and that Quackmore was retconned into being his surname to avoid a continuity mistake between different stories.

By the way, is it really unknown who was part of Gemston's team of translators/localizators?

May 6, 2017 19:40:00 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

I've mentioned before that I dislike the name "Quackmore" for Scrooge's butler because that's Donald's father's name.

Same for me. Avoiding characters with the same name in the same setting is always a good rule, and the presence of two characters named Quackmore is even more annoying because Quackmore is not a real name but a fictional name created for Donald's father.

May 6, 2017 19:40:00 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

I've always thought of Battista as youthful, and the Magica's Hot Plot butler seems older, but that may have more to do with artistic style.

I guess it depends on whether the colorist decides to give him brown hair or white hair. The same reasoning is true for Quackfaster and other characters.

[Zantaf]

May 6, 2017 20:13:39 GMT drakeborough said:

Anyway, you say "Passport To Lisbon" is the second and last "official" (per Inducks) appearance of the butler from "The Seven Cities of Cibola", and yet Inducks lists 8 appearances for him, with "Passport To Lisbon" being the 5th. This seems like an arbitrary decision, though: the unnamed butler from "Cibola" and the unnamed butler from "Passport" are not that similar, so there's no evidence they were meant to be the same character. The same thing is true for the unnamed butler from "The Money Ocean", which Inducks decided to identify as Battista.

May 6, 2017 19:27:44 GMT Zantaf said:

4) Here's the 3rd page from "The Bronze Gate" (I TL 2423-3) from Donald Duck Adventures (Gemstone) #16, the first appearance of the name Quackmore in English.

I see that he is called "Mr. Quackmore", which means that from the beginning Quackmore was meant to be his surname (as opposed to Quackmore Duck, in which Q. is a given name). So my original guess is wrong: I had though that Albert and Quackmore were both meant to be Battista's given name in English, and that Quackmore was retconned into being his surname to avoid a continuity mistake between different stories.

By the way, is it really unknown who was part of Gemston's team of translators/localizators?

What I meant is that according to Inducks, "Passport To Lisbon" marks the second and last appearance of the character "US' butler from W US 7-02" in the United States.
The butlers from all three stories ("Cibola", "Money Ocean" & "Passport") bear some physical resemblance to each other, but whether they were intended to be the same person or completely different individuals is perhaps a little difficult to tell with certainty because they were drawn by 3 different artists (Barks, Rota & Pujol respectively) They do clearly share some common characteristic features between them as all three are bald and have sideburns. But IMHO the "Money Ocean" butler is definitely not Battista despite what Inducks claims.
Regarding "Mr. Quackmore" being a surname, I'm not sure. Maybe Huey Dewey and Louie refer to him as "Mr. Quackmore" out of respect for being their senior. Scrooge on the other hand calls him just Quackmore on the last page:


Not all of Gemstone's pocket books have credits for translation/dialogue/localization, and sadly, as I said before, volume 16 of Donald Duck Adventures is one of them, which means it might be very difficult to find out who came up with the name Quackmore. From the few volumes that do have credits it seems that the team responsible for localizing the stories for the pocket books included Annette Roman, Rick Thomas, Gary Leach and David Gerstein. Credits for localization in other Gemstone editions such as Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, Uncle Scrooge etc include Chris Barat, Don Markstein, David Gerstein, Thad Komorowski, Dwight Decker, Joe Torcivia and (possibly many) others.

[Zantaf]

May 6, 2017 19:40:00 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

He only appears on the first page in "Magica's Hot Plot".
Here's an example of how variable his hairstyle can be on Quackmore's Inducks gallery. It seems that Italian artists never run out of hair styling ideas!

[Minotaur]

Forgive me for not quoting the text since it's ridiculously hard to crop it on the phone.

To drakeborough:
No, Rosa didn't use Dumbella because it was stupid AND because it was not the first. I don't have his English text on hand but I translated part of it into Chinese a few months ago. He said Barks gave him 'Thalma', but he decided to changed it back to an earlier edition. It was then he began to talk about why he chose 'Della' over 'Dumbella'. I think I also saw it somewhere else, he said he didn't use 'Thalma' was because it has never been used in the comics AND it was not the first one given.

[Minotaur]

Text in Don Rosa Library is about the same as his previous text, except for a few sentences he added: the one includes 'Abigail' and the one said 'I could have asked David Gerstein, the editor of Don Rosa Library, to remove Fethry from the tree'.

He also changed the order for a few paragraphs on LVD, Daisy as Donald's relative, and HDL's father (as I recall).

[drakeborough]

May 6, 2017 23:01:12 GMT Zantaf said:

What I meant is that according to Inducks, "Passport To Lisbon" marks the second and last appearance of the character "US' butler from W US 7-02" in the United States.

Ah, ok, I didn't notice the "in the U.S." part of your message. So, both things are true: he is indexed as appearing in eight stories, but only six of these were published in the USA.

May 6, 2017 23:01:12 GMT Zantaf said:

The butlers from all three stories ("Cibola", "Money Ocean" & "Passport") bear some physical resemblance to each other, but whether they were intended to be the same person or completely different individuals is perhaps a little difficult to tell with certainty because they were drawn by 3 different artists (Barks, Rota & Pujol respectively) They do clearly share some common characteristic features between them as all three are bald and have sideburns.

I'd say they all have a generic butler design, so I don't think they were meant to be the same character. But this is a matter of opinion.

May 6, 2017 23:01:12 GMT Zantaf said:

Regarding "Mr. Quackmore" being a surname, I'm not sure. Maybe Huey Dewey and Louie refer to him as "Mr. Quackmore" out of respect for being their senior. Scrooge on the other hand calls him just Quackmore on the last page

So my initial theory that Quackmore was at first meant to be his given name and was later retconned into being his surname is not without a foundation.

May 6, 2017 23:01:12 GMT Zantaf said:

Not all of Gemstone's pocket books have credits for translation/dialogue/localization, and sadly, as I said before, volume 16 of Donald Duck Adventures is one of them, which means it might be very difficult to find out who came up with the name Quackmore. From the few volumes that do have credits it seems that the team responsible for localizing the stories for the pocket books included Annette Roman, Rick Thomas, Gary Leach and David Gerstein.

Well, many David knows who came up with the name.

May 7, 2017 2:01:35 GMT Minotaur said:

Forgive me for not quoting the text since it's ridiculously hard to crop it on the phone.

To drakeborough:
No, Rosa didn't use Dumbella because it was stupid AND because it was not the first. I don't have his English text on hand but I translated part of it into Chinese a few months ago. He said Barks gave him 'Thalma', but he decided to changed it back to an earlier edition. It was then he began to talk about why he chose 'Della' over 'Dumbella'. I think I also saw it somewhere else, he said he didn't use 'Thalma' was because it has never been used in the comics AND it was not the first one given.

This is from the text from which I previously linked:

On Barks' Tree, Huey Dewey & Louie's mother was named Thelma -- this was one name I decided I should change back to the original version of her first appearance in 1938. In HD&L's first animated cartoon appearance, the name on the letter that announced their arrival was "Dumbella". This was a rather stupid name for a main character ("dumbbell" is a childish American insult name) and I would never use that disrespectful name for the mother of these noble kids! Fortunately, we can disregard this cartoon completely since the trio actually first appeared to the world several months earlier in Al Taliaferro's "Donald Duck" newspaper comic strips! In that true first appearance, the letter from the kids' mother is signed "Della", a name that sounds very good with "Duck", so this was my obvious choice.

So, he mentions two reasons: Dumbella sounds stupid, and the name Della was used first. I think his attitude was basically: I am glad the name Della came first so I can use this fact as a reason to ignore the other name which I don't like. I think Don would still have chosen Della over Dumbella even if we all lived in a parallel universe in which the cartoon with Dumbella came before the newspaper comic with Della, but it's a moot point since we live in this universe in which Della came before.

There are many other Rosa quotes on the subject of HDL's mother's name: the earliest known quote is probably this one from 24 April 1993:

I'm using Della as the name of Donald's sister. That was the original, first used, even though it was in the newspaper strip which I regard as a different "Donald Duck" than the comic book version. Still, the name Thelma came from nowhere, and didn't go as well with "Duck".

The above quote is about Della/Dumbella vs Thelma, rather than about Della vs Dumbella.

May 7, 2017 2:18:12 GMT Minotaur said:

Text in Don Rosa Library is about the same as his previous text, except for a few sentences he added: the one includes 'Abigail' and the one said 'I could have asked David Gerstein, the editor of Don Rosa Library, to remove Fethry from the tree'.

He also changed the order for a few paragraphs on LVD, Daisy as Donald's relative, and HDL's father (as I recall).

Good to know that is almost the same. If someone can upload a scan of the published article I would be glad to see it, but if none can do it... well, it doesn't really matter.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

This isn't about Quackmore/Battista/Albert/Etc., but since Zio Paperone e il ricupero… armato! was brought up, and considering this thread's original subject, could anyone give me the Italian name of the character called 'Victor Pilleur' in France, who is only mentioned in that story? He's supposed to be the new Chief Tax Collector, and apparently went to school with Scrooge (and routinely stole his stuff, which, thinks Scrooge, doesn't bode well for Pilleur's actions as tax collector).

[drakeborough]

May 7, 2017 10:52:38 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

This isn't about Quackmore/Battista/Albert/Etc., but since Zio Paperone e il ricupero… armato! was brought up, and considering this thread's original subject, could anyone give me the Italian name of the character called 'Victor Pilleur' in France, who is only mentioned in that story?

He is called Tritorchia, and Battista says his name doesn't promise anything good:

"Tri-" or "tris-" is a prefix meaning "three" or "three times". "Torchia" is the third person singular of the verb "torchiare", and comes from the noun "torchio", which indicates any of the various systems for concentrating the pressure in a limited space ("torchio vinario" means "wine press", "torchio oleario" means "oil mill", etc.). The verb "torchiare" means "squeeze/press something with a torchio", but the verb is often used in a figurative way to indicate the act of "forcing someone to do something very tiring" or "interrogate someone for a long time".

[drakeborough]

May 6, 2017 15:47:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Also, it's a shame the writer of the backup Grandma Duck story in WDC&S#121 is unknown ... that person gets credit for naming Grandma, as it's now clear that Taliaferro never used a first name for his creation; the DCML member's vague memories to that effect were obviously incorrect. Or could it be that Riley Thompson added the name on his own accord to the art, and thus is the originator? Unfortunately, we will probably never know.

I was thinking: the backup Grandma Duck story in WDC&S#121 was published in October 1950, and it's the first Grandma story after the one that defined her universe ("Donald's Grandma Duck", July 1950), which was drawn by Carl Barks, while the writer is generally thought to be editor Chase Craig. Now, the two stories where published only three months apart, while it's well known that a story takes more than three months to be published after it is finished. We can conclude that the Grandma story in WDC&S#121 had already been created before the publication of "Donald's Grandma Duck", and since authors usually don't have access to unpublished stories (unless they created them), I can see three options:

1) The Grandma story in WDC&S#121 was written by Chase Craig, and this explains why its writer seems to be aware of "Donald's Grandma Duck".

2) Craig let one of the Western writers see the finished but still-to-be-published "Donald's Grandma Duck", and asksed him/her to write a story based on it.

3) Craig asked one of the Western writers to write a Grandma story and explained to him/her how the Grandma universe should be portrayed; the writer is not aware of "Donald's Grandma Duck" until the story is published.

If it's option 1, and if it was Craig who came up with the name Elviry even before the publication of "Donald's Grandma Duck", I wonder why the whole idea of making "Grandma Duck" a public nickname was born in the first place. Of course, regardless of who wrote the Grandma story in WDC&S #121, we can't rule out that it was Thomson who added the name while drawing the story.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

On a separate topic, but one related to this thread, was it Rosa who came up with Goldie's last name being "O'Gilt"? If so, has he ever discussed the circumstances behind that?