Why is the English football team based in Milton Keynes named "Dons"?

Milton Keynes Dons, generally referred to just as MK Dons, play (as of March 2022) in the third tier of English football, and are located in the new town of Milton Keynes. They have a purpose built stadium, known as Stadium MK, which is very impressive for this tier of football, and also the home of the women's team.

They take their name from the fact that they are the successor club of Wimbledon FC, who played in the London district of that name. A combination of circumstances led to their controversial move to Milton Keynes. Although Wimbledon had achieved a meteoric journey up the various tiers of English football, rising from non-League status to a place in the First Division and later Premier League, they had fallen on hard times financially by the early 2000s, and their old ground at Plough Lane had fallen into disrepair. There was also a groundswell of opinion that it was high time Milton Keynes, founded in 1967, had a professional football team. So in some ways this was an ideal solution, even though Milton Keynes is 72 kilometres or 45 miles away from Wimbledon itself.

Some diehard fans never accepted the situation, and a so-called "phoenix club", AFC Wimbledon, arose from the ashes and also achieved football league status. To this day there is some bad blood between the two sets of supporters.