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Wouldn't "by da Vinci" be more appropriate in the title?
by ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
Wouldn't "by da Vinci" be more appropriate in the title?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- msephton 2y agoCowabunga!
- throw-qqqqq 2y agoThat’s Michelangelo! Leonardo says “Taste cold steel!” :D
- msephton 2y agoTIL — thanks!
- Archelaos 2y agoIn his time, names in Italy were often differently structured than today, and they varried a lot. For example Leonardo's full name was Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ("Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci"). For Michelangelo it was Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. For Raphael it was Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino. They all are known and commonly referred to by their baptismal name (often translated it. Raffaello => engl. Raphael, germ. Raffael). However, there are other Italians contemporary to them, were we use other parts of their name as a shorthand, sometimes altered somewhat to adjust to our modern forename-surname system. For example: Filippo di ser Brunellesco di Lippo Lapi => Filippo Brunelleschi, or Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli => Niccolò Machiavelli. There are other special cases: Giovanni Pico dei conti della Mirandola e della Concordia is known as "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola" and can be reffered to as "Pico della Mirandola" or "Pico", but usally not as "della Mriandola". Galileo Galilei is also a special case, were both, "Galileo" and "Galilei", are acceptable (although I think "Galilei" is becoming more and more the standard). So there is no rule of thumb how to refer to famous Italians of the Renaissance. It differs from case to case. You simply have to follow the individual practices.
- metalman 2y agoleft out Bernini, but then he is always left out. Alexander the Macedonian? hey! Cervantes has been reduced to an adjective taken out of context but for a more contemporary example, Albert, not only knew of but approved of the term "Einstoon", as he did experience becoming a charactature in his own time.
- filoeleven 2y agoHuh, I thought it was Donatello that was missing from the list.
- Frederation 2y agoTurtle Power! /s
- pinkmuffinere 2y agoThis is very informative! > It differs from case to case. You simply have to follow the individual practices. Surely in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, the “standard practice” in English is to say “da Vinci” or “ Leonardo da Vinci”, not _just_ “Leonardo”. Leonardo could be anyone for all I know
- Archelaos 2y agoPerhaps people mistook Dan Brown as authoritative on the matter. I browsed the read samples of some of the top listed books on Leonardo da Vinci on Amazon, and all use "Leonardo" in their introduction whenever they do not refer to him as "Leonardo da Vinci". I found no single isolated "da Vinci". See: https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/0715324535 https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/0715324535 https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/B0DHFRBMF3 https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/B0DHFRBMF3 https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/1501139169 https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/1501139169 The standard way to avoid confusion is to introduce him as "Leonardo da Vinci" and later just say "Leonardo".
- 2y ago
- Tor3 2y agoHe was called "Leonardo" at the time, and if anyone asked "Which Leonardo?" then the reply could be "Leonardo from Vinci" (there are other combinations to identify someone, re sister comment). Think of it as "Leonardo from Chicago". The title wouldn't sound right with "by from Chicago". Icelandic names today are almost the same - the "daughter/son" part is more like a "from" identifier than an actual name. Thus you address an Icelander by the "first" name. Or you'll end up doing the equivalent of calling someone "from Chicago".
- 3836293648 2y agoThat doesn't change how he's known today though
- Tor3 2y agoHe's known today as "Leonardo" as well. It's just that there are some people who aren't familiar with this. Exactly as some will use the "last" name with people from Iceland, even though it's as meaningless as calling someone "from Chicago".
- joarv0249nw 2y agoRembrandt van Rijn is known as Rembrandt. Vincent van Gogh is known as van Gogh.
- throw_pm23 2y agoYes, I guess in most of Europe the 200-250 years between Rembrandt and van Gogh is exactly when family names solidified from a simple description "the one from village X" or "son of Y" or "the one with a red hair" to become a hereditary name essentially detached from its meaning.
- seszett 2y agoAlso, van Gogh's popularity came from France, the work he did in France, and in France by this time family names had been standard there for a long time already (since around the 16th century), much earlier than in the Netherlands.
- yapyap 2y agothe turtle did this
- etiam 2y agoNot really no, and it isn't any shorter in characters.