Sunday, August 22, 2010

Which Donovan?

According to his 1994 Topps card, Donovan Osborne, "received his given name from his father, who enjoyed John Wayne's 1963 movie 'Donovan's Reef.'"

According to Wikipedia, which apparently got it from the Cardinals Encyclopedia, he was named after the "late-1960s flower-child singer Donovan."

So was he named after a tough-guy John Wayne character, as Topps claims, or a hippie flower child, as Wikipedia indicates?
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1 comment:

  1. Steve78August 28, 2010 at 10:33 PM

    Looks like Google News has three references, they're all pay articles, but they seem to suggest it was, in fact, Donovan's Reef. The Pantagraph article from 1993 seems to be the one that would explain it.

    http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22donovan+osborne%22+%22donovan%27s+reef%22&btnG=Search+Archives&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=a

    From the two lines of the article available on Google News, it appears that Osborne thought it was the singer, and told reporters, but his dad corrected him.

    http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22called+me+and+just+ripped+me+up%22&btnG=Search+Archives&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=a

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