"Donde" is ultimately from a combination of the obsolete adverb "onde" ("whence" or "from where") and the preposition "de". "Onde" is from Latin VNDE, which also meant "whence" or "from where", and over the centuries it lost the "from" meaning and came to mean just "where". This meant that, to say "whence" or "where from", the preposition "de" had to be added, and this gave "d'onde". The meaning of "d'onde" once again eroded over time until it came to mean just "where", and prepositions therefore had to be added once more. This gave rise to the modern usage of "donde" for "where" and "a donde" for "to where", among others. Note that all this means that, etymologically speaking, "de donde" is the rather redundant "from from from where", and "a donde" is the rather contradictory "to from from where". This tendency goes even further with the vulgar form "ande" (from "adonde"), which is often used to mean "where" as well. In the Ladino dialect of Spanish, the pronoun "onde" is still used, where "donde" still means "whence" or "where from", and in Latin America, isolated communities and rural areas retain this as well.