I agree, Wilfried, that's pretty much what I said above. I would only quibble with your rendition of how the word "must" be pronounced. Kometz alef (with the little "T" under the letter), at least among the Yiddish speakers in my family, as well as the ones I've heard on radio and record, is generally pronounced "aw" as in "law"...or, in my grandfather's accent, "oo" as in "boo". It's usually transliterated as "o", which is how Wilfried wrote it--but that "o" doesn't sound like "hot" or "hope". Patach alef (with the little hyphen under the letter) is pronounced "ah" as in "shah". (I know, many Americans pronounce "aw" and "ah" the same...but they're distinct in Yiddish and in Ashkenazic Hebrew--and in Philadelphia!) So the word as written in Yiddish (dalet, kometz alef, nun, patach alef) would not be pronounced "dana" ("dah-na"), but rather "dawna" or "doona".

I suspect that the standard but quirky transliteration of this vowel as "o" is probably why the word is usually sung as "Dona" (rhyming with "Mona" or "Arizona") -- that spelling would be the standard transliteration of the Yiddish word, which in English you'd pronounce with a long "o".

Gee, I'm not usually this pedantic...!

And thanks, Bennet, for mentioning YIVO and Hankus Netsky...there are probably resources "out there" to answer the question of whether the song has traditional roots. I suspect it does, because, whatever else you want to say about that word, it's definitely not Yiddish. I don't have the time to pursue it, but maybe someone else does...

Aloha,
Mark