Leonardo ??️

Riverwalk

Apologies due to Fanny.

The National Gallery call him Leonardo!

About 10 years' ago I went to the exhibition at the National Gallery where The Virgin of the Rocks was on display - and somewhere in a drawer I had a carrier bag and this is it:

I saw that exhibition?. I have a finch. ?.

Regarding the OP.

I think everyone knows who you mean by whatever you say, it isn’t something to get too hung up about.

sparkhill is farther out from the city than sparkbrook, iirc.
on the stratford road.
i used to have relatives in sparkhill; lovely big solid re brick houses, well spaced, semis, with side entries, where everyone had a front parlour that was never used, just kept for best.
as to names, what about nelson mandela house in only fools and horses.
when i was at college, the multi purpose hall, mph, had recently been renamed nelson mandela hall, nmh, somewhat confusingly. not sure if he had any direct connection but his name was taken up by many organisations to shew support.
desmond tutu had been a student there a decade earlier.

Why not say Leonardo Da Vinci?
That should minimise confusion.
In Wales, to better define a person they were referred to as "Jones the milk" to distinguish them from "Jones the coal"
The hymn "Cwm Rhonda" is attributed to William Willams,
Pantallelyn (Hope I've spelled that correctly!)
(There must have been a lot of William Williams in Wales at the time).
So that must draw a parallel with Leonardo Da Vinci

Naninka

I thought we were going to talk about Leonardo Di Caprio.

Even with my carefully curated emojis?
Thank you Maw, very interesting, what a clever sausage you are
Grandma2020 I didn't realise that I had said anything that could be regarded as 'precious'.
Thanks Ali, I'm glad I made you smile

@Fanny Cornforth
Haha 'Tracey Da Margate' ?? But, she could also be known as 'Tracey Da Cliftonville'
'Tracey Da Millmead',
'Tracey Da Dane Valley',
'Tracey Da Isle of Thanet',
'Tracey Da Planet Thanet'.
Margate covers, or is in, these places!
'Tracey of the Unmade Bed'.
??

And another one - Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn - whom you might recognise as Rembrandt.

And of course we refer to Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, as just Michelangelo - not Simoni (his surname) and Giovanni Antonio Canal as Canaletto and not Canal

El Greco just means “the Greek”
His name was Doménikos Theotokópoulos,

I can remember decades ago - was it when the National Gallery bought the Leonardo cartoon for gazillions of £££££, a sketch with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sitting in front of it and saying “I don’t get the bloody joke, Dud”
It wasn’t called the da Vinci cartoon then.
Dan Brown (to me) first got it wrong for that dreadful book “The Da Vinci Code”
A more recent Leonardo exhibition illustrated left.

I thought we were going to talk about Leonardo Di Caprio.

I would say Leonardo, but because da Vinci is the most well-known reference to Leonardo da Vinci I would be quite happy to use da Vinci if that was the name being used in any particular discussion.
The most important thing is communication rather than esoteric knowledge.
Am I being as "precious" as Ms Cornforth?

Sorry but men are usually known by their given surname throughout history. It is not just in the art world, politics where you will here Winston Churchill referred to as Churchill, David Cameron as Cameron etc. The same is not true of famous women they are usually referred to by their given first name or full title such as Theresa May, Margaret Thatcher, Bess of Hardwicke. Hope this helps.

Kryptonite I meant El Greco's real name was a bit of a mouthful for non Greeks, not Leonardo Da Vinci !?

I have always used his full name, Leonardo da Vinci, every time. It's so lovely the way it trips off the tongue too, don't you think?

He is best known as Leonardo. However painters and artists are not always known by their actual given names, think of El Greco. His real name was probably too much of a mouthful!?

Tiggy that’s how the usage of the name Joseph Wright of Derby came about.
There was another member of the Royal Academy at the same time with the same name (from London) who was a member first,

Lots of British surnames originate from place names, e.g. Windsor, Lancashire, Kent, Carlisle. I can’t see the problem with da Vinci. There could have been another artistic Leonardo from another town! ?

Well there you go I've learnt something. Apparently surnames were not in use in his day in the way that we know them, but Leonardo was named as follows:

Leonardo da Vinci,[b] properly named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci).

Very interesting! But I suspect I will still name / refer to him as Da Vinci!

Ha. When I lived in Bedford there were Lower schools named

Scott
Livingstone
Drake
loads of others I can’t remember

And most frustratingly

Edith Cavell

Which they always pronounced wrongly.

It made me grind my teeth?

That’s ridiculous Alegrias
They must have a very high opinion of themselves!
I think that it’s similarly daft to name a secondary modern after a world renowned genius

There is an advertising agency in Australia called Einstein da Vinci.

No, me neither

@FannyCornforth

^Just to return to my original post…
Do you think that Da Vinci is a suitable name for a school, or would Leonardo have been a better choice?
(I have no idea why they chose that name; as far as I know, the great man didn’t have any connections to the East Midlands!)^

Nelson Mandela didn't have any connections with Birmingham either to my knowledge (although I could be mistaken, in which case I'm sure someone will correct me) but there's a school named after him in Sparkhill (or is it Sparkbrook? I know where the two areas meet but can never rememberwhich is further from the city centre).

his full name is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, (Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci), it still remains unsure of his actual birthplace as he was born out of wedlock.

Perhaps Leonardo’s uncle, Mario da Dudley, had a chain of ice cream parlours.

Just to return to my original post…
Do you think that Da Vinci is a suitable name for a school, or would Leonardo have been a better choice?
(I have no idea why they chose that name; as far as I know, the great man didn’t have any connections to the East Midlands!)