A boy's name, an Irish surname that has also become used as a given name for males.
From Irish 'Ó Donóváin' (descendant of Donóván). The Irish elements mean 'brown' and 'dark,' making it literally 'son of the brown/dark one.'
Irish surnames starting with 'Ó' (meaning 'descendant of') were stripped away during English colonization—so 'Donovan' losing its 'Ó' is actually a linguistic marker of Irish diaspora and cultural suppression.
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