Donee is from done (variant of donate) + -ee, modeled on legal Latin/French agent-patient pairs; ultimately from Latin donare ('to give'), from donum ('gift'). The ancestry passes through Latin donare, Latin donum, and Proto-Indo-European *deh₃-. The suffix -ee marks the person affected by or receiving an action, so the English form is shaped by recognizable word formation as well as by its inherited or borrowed base. In present use as a noun, it means "a person to whom a gift is made", keeping the historical formation close to the word's ordinary semantic work. Related words include donate, donation, donor, and donator.