the one in red, usually
2026-10-18
Three ducks, one sentence, split three ways.
Hughie (more often spelled Huey) is one of Donald Duck's three nephews, alongside Dewey and Louie. For most of their history the three were close to interchangeable: same height, same caps, same habit of finishing each other's sentences.
The nephews first appeared in a Sunday newspaper strip in October 1937, drawn by Al Taliaferro. Their animated debut followed in Donald's Nephews (1938), where they arrive for a visit and wreck their uncle's house with a polo game played on tricycles.
For decades, the colors of their caps and shirts varied from one story to the next. The arrangement most fans now treat as canon:
| Nephew | Color | Mnemonic |
|---|---|---|
| Huey | red | the reddest of the three names |
| Dewey | blue | dew is water, water is blue |
| Louie | green | leaves, as in "Lou-leaf" |
In the comics, the nephews are members of the Junior Woodchucks, a scouting organization introduced by Carl Barks in 1951. Their Junior Woodchucks Guidebook holds an answer to nearly any problem, which conveniently ends many a plot.