Though the name doesn't show up in internet searches except in regards to this movie, it's probably a variation of the name Donovan. There are several cities in the mid-west called Doniphon, with one, at least, named after a person. John Wayne's characters usually have Irish names though Doniphon doesn't register in any Irish names lists. The name Donovan isn't a particularly popular Irish name either.
KS
What sort of name is brupey-1? Why not call yourself droopy-1?
No offense, but why question the last name of a character in a classic film or any film? I'm sure there have been names in other films that seem obscure. I never heard of the name Dufresne before I watched The Shawshank Redemption. Maybe the script writer knew someone by that name. Maybe the script writer made it up. Maybe the writer used the name of a town as another commenter mentioned. Who cares?
Brupey is a distinguished aristocratic surname from the old country!!
shareI knew a girl in school in the '60s named Dufresne, pronounced "Doo-FRAIN".
shareI was watching this on Ch. 5-2 in NYC with the Closed Captions on. Everyone says his name as Donovan, but the caption would come up as "DOXXXHON" which was driving me nuts until I saw Tom's name spelled out on the sign at his ranch in the scene with Pompey. The apparent reason is that the censorship on the captioning app they use seems to be overly sensitive ands X's out the slur "NIP". This channel's funny because when they showed "Fun With Dick and Jane", every time someone says Geo. Segal's name "DICK",it comes out as "XXXX". And every movie I've watched where someone says the word "CONSPICUOUS", it reads as "CONXXXXCUOUS".
shareI watched the movie last night. The name Doniphon doesn't sound Irish to me. Donovan most certainly is. If director John Ford wanted John Wayne's character to be an Irish-American it would be in the script, on the screen, in one way or another. Oddly, the following year Wayne appeared in a film titled Donovan's Reef, as lighthearted as Liberty Valance is solemn. Lee Marvin's in that one, too.
shareBoth movies were directed by John Ford. I have read that the real reason for filming "Donavon's Reef" was so that the Ford crew, John Ford, John Wayne, Lee Marvin and others, could go fishing off Tahiti for a few weeks and write it off their taxes.
That was a fun movie. Everyone in it seemed to be having a good time. Wayne appeared in a few like that around the same time (North To Alaska, The Comancheros, Hatari!).
shareI've seen the name "Doniphon" before, although it's certainly not as common as Donovan.
Back when most people were illiterate, correct spelling--in English, anyway--wasn't that important. It was important in Latin, the language that all educated people knew in the Middle Ages, because (for example) the word "good" in Latin is bonus, bona, or bonum, depending on the gender of the noun it modifies. But Shakespeare himself cared so little about standardized spelling that he signed his own name in at least six different ways.
Noah Webster prepared his Blue-Backed Speller because he saw American English deteriorating and began to worry that if Americans couldn't be understood when they spoke to each other, the thirteen original colonies would split into thirteen different nations. So he appointed himself to create a common language based on English but with distinctly American features like simplified spellings: labor instead of labour, center instead of centre, and check instead of cheque. He also created standard spellings for words like opossum and hominy which were taken from native American languages.
The story that Ellis Island immigration officials arbitrarily changed surnames that they couldn't spell is a myth. But some immigrants chose new names to go with their new nationality. Some Donovan ancestor of Tom might have changed the family name for that reason.