Who is your favorite Avenger? I like Evans’ Captain America and Hemsworth’s Thor but to me Junior’s Iron Man is the best of them all.
Well, yes, he was probably celibate . . .
Da Vinci is pretty nearly a valid surname for the guy. He lived at a time when people of that area were adopting hereditary surnames - usually patronymic, but also not infrequently location-based. Obviously da Vinci was a clearly still also a descriptive term at the time, but if he’d fathered a line of descendants, there’s a reasonable chance they would have taken da Vinci as a formal surname - it’s exactly that period in history where the transition took place.
It’s not da Vinci that rankles me; it’s Da Vinci.
And it hardly matters what his hypothetical descendants have done, if they don’t exist.
I shan’t argue with that.
It makes no difference. Leonardo himself lived right on the cusp of the transition from descriptive names into hereditary surnames.
Yeah, get the fuck over it. Everyone knows who “Da Vinci” refers to, and these pedantic crap-fests are tedious and boring. We aren’t living in his time. Da Vinci is the name he should be called today, because it is the least confusing option.
The people who say “Da Vinci” aren’t hampering communication nearly as much as the people who whine about it and hijack threads.
A most bodacious solider and general, Ms. Of Arc totally rousted the English from France.
Yeah, she was a hot one . . .
Was roasted by the English IN France, you mean…
Thank you. Another good thread shat upon by pedant brigade. Yuck. This isn’t a historical treatise it’s an internet trivia message board. Everyone know who Da Vinci is. Leonardo might be confusing without context. Please get the fuck over yourself.
I wish I could find a cite for this but I was told by a friend who is into the history of wars and weapons that a lot of Da Vinci’s designs had an uncanny resemblance to war machine designs found in old chinese archives. Many of them were modified into several different versions but all used a similar principle.
The motto for this board is “fighting ignorance”. If you don’t like your ignorance being fought there are plenty of places where your misconceptions will not be gently corrected.
Wrong. There is no ignorance to fight on the subject within this thread. We all understand perfectly well what “da Vinci” means, so please don’t use that as an excuse for pedantic hijacks.
The only misconception here is yours.
I can’t wait to see a Nostradamus thread.
Pedantic hijacks need no excuse.
It’s Leonardo.
I’m pretty sure that DiCaprio guy plagiarized most of his stuff.
I hated him in Titanic. Or did you mean the mutated turtle? Raphael was always my favorite, to be honest.
You’re hilarious. No, it’s not ‘fighting ignorance’. da (or Da) Vinci is a perfectly acceptable english designator for the funky artist and thinker who lived from 1452 to 1519 in colloquial and I’d even say formal english writing (And do not kid yourself, this board is colloquial english). Do you know how I know that? Because googling da vinci and hitting I’m feeling lucky takes you straight to his wikipedia page.
Wikipedia claims that there are no English words that rhyme with fork. 
But you’re right that I’m being pedantic, since what bugs me mostly is capitalizing the “da.” I don’t object to referring to the polymath in question as Leonardo da Vinci; I just think that if you’re going to shorten the name you should use the forename. One wouldn’t call the author of the Epistle to the Romans “of Tarsus,” after all.
Once again I feel compelled to ask: can you specify which of da Vinci’s (see? I’m bending!) ideas you believe are or might be plagiarized?