Wouldn't "by da Vinci" be more appropriate in the title?
Archelaos 5 days ago [-]
In 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.
pinkmuffinere 4 days ago [-]
This 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 4 days ago [-]
Perhaps 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:
Historic Arabic names also have such rich context - father's name, son's name, place.
Ibn, bin -- son of
Abu -- father of
Sometimes, if Abdul happened not to have a son, the placeholder would be filled by some other famous Abdul's son.
um1 4 days ago [-]
Di caprio?
metalman 4 days ago [-]
left 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 4 days ago [-]
Huh, I thought it was Donatello that was missing from the list.
Frederation 4 days ago [-]
Turtle Power! /s
Tor3 5 days ago [-]
He 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".
joarv0249nw 4 days ago [-]
Rembrandt van Rijn is known as Rembrandt.
Vincent van Gogh is known as van Gogh.
throw_pm23 4 days ago [-]
Yes, 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 4 days ago [-]
Also, 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.
saalweachter 4 days ago [-]
Specifically, in 1811 Napoleon made surnames mandatory for the Dutch.
A number of Dutch, displeased with Napoleon and thinking the surname thing wouldn't last, took... unfortunate surnames.
xeonmc 4 days ago [-]
Where do Dick Van Dyke fit in all of this?
Quarrel 4 days ago [-]
He is far too alive for us to worry about that.
(Luckily, these posts are explicitly datestamped .. !)
lxgr 4 days ago [-]
Yes, but this articles is written in our time, not his. So why not just "Leonardo da Vinci" as a compromise?
3836293648 4 days ago [-]
That doesn't change how he's known today though
Tor3 4 days ago [-]
He'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".
amelius 4 days ago [-]
Shouldn't Icelanders look more at last names, considering the inbreeding issues on that small island?
werdnapk 4 days ago [-]
Apparently they have an app that citizens can check to make sure they're not dating a relative.
Tunnels following walls and moats are quite normal and not mysterious at all. They just tend to be abandoned and forgotten after a few centuries of peace, as urban castles become palaces and city walls become an encumbrance, even if they had not been designed as highly confidential secret passages in the first place as seems the case here.
I think OP was expecting something a bit different, but nope, this is it.
kurthr 5 days ago [-]
So unsatisfying for "mysterious tunnels", that aren't really tunnels, are barely plural, if at all, and don't seem mysterious.
teruakohatu 5 days ago [-]
I had the same reaction when I saw this article on CNN a week ago. A little more exciting than "lost drain pipe discovered under Utah couples' home", but not by a whole lot!
At least the title was descriptive and not "You won't believe what was discovered under Sforza Castle".
xg15 4 days ago [-]
The tunnels they found are definitely plural though, only the connection to the sketches seems a bit tenuous.
> It features a well-known underground passageway that runs along the perimeter of the castle’s moat and is accessible to tourists. But to the researchers’ surprise, their survey revealed a second secret tunnel that experts had only hypothesized about for years.
The second tunnel runs parallel to the first one, about 1 meter (3 feet) beneath the surface. [...]
The researchers also uncovered other tunnels [...] including one that heads in the direction of the Basilica of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the resting place of the wife of Duke Ludovico Sforza.
grahamj 5 days ago [-]
From the title I wasn't sure if they were even found
kristopolous 5 days ago [-]
so what impulse is there that the sketch has to correspond to reality?
Rendered at 18:57:18 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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.
> 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
https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/0715324535
https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/B0DHFRBMF3
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".
But in fact, the man your college friend-group calls "Johnny from the Bronx" in English would not be shortened to "from the Bronx".
If the topic is sketching and someone refers to Leonardo, you should know who it is.
It's like referring to "Michael" when talking about basketball.
Indeed. There was a famous Leonardo from Pisa. Son of Bonacci.
Ibn, bin -- son of Abu -- father of
Sometimes, if Abdul happened not to have a son, the placeholder would be filled by some other famous Abdul's son.
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".
A number of Dutch, displeased with Napoleon and thinking the surname thing wouldn't last, took... unfortunate surnames.
(Luckily, these posts are explicitly datestamped .. !)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/kissing-cousins-icelandic-a...
Which is also the sketch included in the CNN page, here's a direct link: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/2b18k97.jpg...
At least the title was descriptive and not "You won't believe what was discovered under Sforza Castle".
> It features a well-known underground passageway that runs along the perimeter of the castle’s moat and is accessible to tourists. But to the researchers’ surprise, their survey revealed a second secret tunnel that experts had only hypothesized about for years.
The second tunnel runs parallel to the first one, about 1 meter (3 feet) beneath the surface. [...]
The researchers also uncovered other tunnels [...] including one that heads in the direction of the Basilica of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the resting place of the wife of Duke Ludovico Sforza.