The Da Vinci Contention - Was it (and if not, is it now) his surname?

Great Debates
1

To avoid further hijack of thisthread, I’ve opened another (this one) to discuss further the question of the rights and wrongs of considering ‘Da Vinci’ (or ‘da Vinci’) to be the surname of the famous Florentine polymath, without further hijack to the linked thread.

My position in this argument is that it is in fact his surname (or might as well be), based on the following:
[ul]
[li]He was alive at exactly the time when people of that region made the shift from descriptive names to hereditary surnames[/li][li]Many of those hereditary surnames were patronymic (unlike da Vinci), but some were indeed were based on location of origin[/li][li]If Leonardo had fathered a bloodline, the surname of that bloodline may well have ended up being da Vinci (and eventually in modern times, probably changing to DaVinci) - and his descendants would trace their ancestry back to Leonardo’s father (Piero da Vinci) without batting an eye[/li][/ul]

I acknowledge arguments to the contrary including:
[ul]
[li]To Leonardo, it wasn’t a surname (yes - because the concept was still in development at that time)[/li][li]His full name was Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci - a surname derived from this might instead have become di ser Piero or di Piero (I don’t disagree with this - I guess it might)[/li][/ul]

2

In addition, the “from” derivation of names is commonplace in other places. Beethoven: we don’t call him “Ludwig,” we call him “Beethoven.” The American President isn’t “Martin,” but “Van Buren.”

It’s commonplace in the English language, and this is an English-language discussion board. Nichts war?

3

Depends on what you mean by “surname”.

Originally a surname was a name taken or assigned to someone in addition to their given personal name, mainly to distinguish them from other people with the same given name. But this sense is now obsolete; “Madgalene” is not the surname of Mary Magdalene, for example, just as “the Greek” is not the surname of Jimmy the Greek.

Pretty early on, though, it came to mean a name, added to someone’s personal given name, which pointed to that person’s relationship to others, either explicitly (as with names like “Johnson”) or implicitly, because surnames were inherited or acquired on marriage, and so were shared with in a family.

Assuming that Leonardo da Vinci was so called during his own life by people wishing to differentiate him from other Leonardos, you could make a case that “da Vinci” was his surname in the first sense. (I don’t know whether there is evidence that “da Vinci” was used that way by his contemporaries.)

I doubt that we can make a case that “da Vinci” was his surname in the second sense, if only because he didn’t have any spouse or descendants, and we have no reason to think that callling him “da Vinci” did anything to identify family relationships. It still doesn’t, so I would say that even today “da Vinci” is not his surname in the second sense.

For us to call him “da Vinci” as a personal identifier is, possibly, anachronistic. If “da Vinci” was used in his own time, was it ever used in isolation from “Leonardo”? I doubt it. If people wanted to call him the equivalent of “that guy from Vinci”, I imagine that would be something like “il vincese”. They would no more refer to Leonardo da Vinci as “da Vinci” than we would refer to Phillip of Spain as “of Spain”.

Still, anachronistic or not, if in fact we do call him “da Vinci” as a personal identifier, then that is his name, pretty much by definition; “a word or phrase constituting the individual designation by which a particular person or thing is known, referred to, or addressed”. So, “da Vinci” may not have been his name in his own time, but it’s his name now.

But not, I think, his surname (in the modern sense) since it is not used to point to any family relationship. The guy basically has two personal names; they can be used in conjuction, or either can be used independently.

4

I’m fairly sure we can say that it wasn’t considered his surname (in the same sense we think of surnames) right at the time - but only because the concept of surnames was brand new and still in development in that part of the world at that time.

But the point is, it was exactly at that time.
Leonardo da Vinci was born 1452, died 1512
most Italians began to assume hereditary surnames around 1450

5

But we don’t know that Leonardo was among the “most Italians” who “began to assume” hereditary surnames.

(Nitpick: how do you “begin to assume” something? You could say that Italians began to assume surnames around 1450, meaning that some Italians assumed them at that time, and others later. Or you could say that most Italians assumed surnames around 1450. But I don’t see exactly what is meant by the claim that “most Italians began to assume surnames” around 1450.)

Leonardo, remember, was illegitimate, which would have been something of a barrier to his been in the front rank of those assuming a hereditary surname. Furthermore, he was in fact born in Vinci, which argues for “da Vinci” having been a descriptor. I don’t think you can say that “da Vinci” is being used as a surname until you can find it being applied to someone who isn’t from Vinci.

6

This is true, however, I think it’s not an unreasonable position, when all the factors are considered together.

I imagine it’s more the case that the concept was a woolly and unclearly-defined one while it was in development.
Until formalised by the requirement to write it down specifically as a family name somewhere, I should think people all had different ideas about whether it was a hereditary name or not, if they gave it a lot of thought.

Is that a formal definition of how hereditary surnames work? If someone named Smith traces their family tree back to John, smith (blacksmith), then that’s the origin of the surname - even if John the blacksmith never considered it part of his name. Surname origins can only be viewed retrospectively.

The fact that Leonardo had no children (so there is nobody to trace backwards from) is a mere technical detail.

7

Toponyms and the like seemed to pretty much play the role of surnames by Leonardo’s time. The system was less formalized, and people occasionally changed them (usually when they reached a higher station in life). But they were already hereditary, people were generally expected to have them (it became required by law in 1550 IIRC), and there was an expectation that unlike simple descriptors, they’d remain at least semi-fixed. Like moderns, they were seen as part of someone’s name.

I don’t think Renaissance Italians generally referred to people by surname only, like we do (they seem to leave this for collective nouns referring to a family, so Machiavelli writes about the di Calona’s or di Orsini to talk about the House in general), but as Trinopus says, its pretty common use in English, so I think it’s perfectly cromulant use to refer to Da Vinci as Da Vinci when writing in English.

Plus, if your going to complain about Renaissance folks being referred to by toponym only, you’ll have to complain about poeple using “Copernicus” or “Gutenberg” as well.

8

I’m slightly wary of building the case on arguments like this - I think they have to be taken in the context of what was happening locally to those people at the time (if that was during or after the period in which family names developed in those places, then all well and good)

9

Plenty of european immigrants in this country used their origin as a last name when they came here. The practice continued into the 20th century, maybe to this day.

10

I’d say that, if I’m John the Smith because I’m a blacksmith, and my son is Joe Smith because he’s my son, Smith is my son’s surname, but it’s not mine.

Where things get murky is where my son is also a blacksmith, and it’s not really possible to say whether he gets called “Smith” because he’s a blacksmith, or because he’s my son. You might be able to answer the question by looking at what my other children get called, or by seeing whether he was called “Smith” before he took up the trade. But of course that evidence might not be available.

Leonardo probably falls into this area. Was he called “da Vinci” because he was from Vinci, or because his father, also from Vinci, was called “da Vinci”? Impossible to say, but I suggest his illegitimacy might lean somewhat against the probability that he inherited a surname from his father.

As to what da Vinci’s children, had he had any, would have been called, I think that’s irrelevant (as well as speculative). If they had been born in Florence, say, but had been called “da Vinci” you could then say that “da Vinci” was their surname, but that wouldn’t mean that it was Leonardo’s. There has to have been a first member of the family to start using “da Vinci” as a surname, but it doesn’t have to have been Leonardo.

I suggest i’ts a surname for anyone who uses it exclusively or primarily to identify the family to which he belongs. From the little I know we cannot say that Leonardo used it that way; just that he might have done, because it was about this time that people started to do this.

11

He was raised in his father’s household, and his fathers other sons (and at least one grandson) also went by da Vinci, so I don’t think his illegitimacy enters into it.

Of course they all were probably born in Vinci (that’s where the family estate was). But I think the fact that they were all using the same surname, across three generations, indicates that it was meant to indicate a familial tie, not just to specify where they were from.

12

Yes, but they did this because they were coming into a society where surnames are conventionally required, and either (a) they didn’t have surnames, or (b) their surnames were, for one reason or another, considered unsuitable. So they adopted new ones.

But Leonardo was born into a society in which surnames were only coming into fashion, and it was presumably common (it was pretty standard, in fact, at the time he was born) not to have one. So there isn’t the same pressure on him to adopt a surname. I suspect that during his time, nobody asked the question whether “da Vinci” was a surname which he would pass to his children; the issue never arose. Others may have been adopting surnames at around this time, but Leonardo had no need to.

Vasari, writing in 1550, refers to him three times as “Leonardo da Vinci”, once as “Leonardo, the son of Ser Piero da Vinci” and more than fifty times simply as “Leonardo”. And what that suggests is that, while surnames may have been common by 1550 (a hundred years after Leonardo was born), they weren’t much used in the way that they are today. It was probably never necessary for Leonardo or his contemporaries to ask themselves whether “da Vinci” was simply a personal descriptor used to distinguish one Leonardo from all the others, or a surname which identifed him as a member of a particular family, and which he would pass to any children he might have.

13

I’ve highlighted your assumption. Aren’t you assuming the truth of what you’re arguing for?

Leonardo’s father was “da Vinci”. So was his grandfather. And this was, obviously, well before the time when “most Italians began to assume” surnames. For them, it was a toponym.

So, clearly, we can’t assume that, just because someone is called “da Vinci”, it’s a surname. At some point, “da Vinci” stopped being a personal toponym and started being a familial surname. But we have no reason to assert that it was in Leonardo’s generation, or in the person of Leonardo himself, that this happened.

I have no problem with the idea that “da Vinci” is, now, Leonardo’s name (or one of them), or with the idea that we employ that name according to our own conventions for using surnames. But I just don’t think the evidence is there to say that, for Leonardo himself or his contemporaries, it was or became his surname.

14

I agree - at the time, those would be the criteria as to whether it was a surname or just a job description. Through the lens of history, however, I don’t think it makes much sense to draw a line at the probably very uncertain boundary between people called Smith as a name and paternal people also called Smith because it’s what they did.

There’s also a bit of (probably irrelevant) logical weirdness about the first generation of a surname. If a surname is defined as a hereditary thing, how can you have it if your father didn’t?

15

It’s your surname because you inherited it and it points to your relationship with your father. It’s not your father’s surname because he didn’t inherit it and it points to, e.g., his profession, his physical characteristics, his place of origin - something personal.

(In other words, I suspect a descriptor typically becomes a (personal) name before it evolves into a (heritable) surname.)

16

“surname” in the sense of secondary name. I’m not assuming it was hereditary, but as you say in your first post, it was certainly used as a part of his name. He used it consistently through his life when signing documents and paintings.

Did his grandfather use it? But there’s a pretty wide range of possible descriptors one can use (and were used at the time) if the purpose is just to distinguish yourself from other people with the same name. The fact that the da Vinci’s all started choosing the same one suggests that they were trying to advertise they were all part of the same family.

Also note that noble houses in Italy had already been doing this for centuries (“di Medici”, etc.) so there was a pretty obvious model to follow.

Googling, apparently one person listed “da Vinci” as a family name in the territories of Florence in 1429. But I can’t find the original document to see whether the first name was the same as Leonardo’s grandfather.

17

This. Nobles had been carrying the name of their fief as family name/ surname for a long time. A Maarten ‘van Buren’ would have been lord of the township Buren.

In Germany there still is a distinction between von and Von, the latter denoting nobility.

18

If his brothers and nephews all used “da Vinci”, the next question would be, were they all from Vinci? It seems to me that it doesn’t become a surname until somebody has it, not by virtue of his own characteristic, but just by his family.

So, Maarten van Buren, who’s the lord of Buren, doesn’t have a surname, but his descendant Martin van Buren, American President, who’s family hasn’t been in Buren for 5 generations, does.

19

Is the any evidence he used it as a surname in our sense in his lifetime?

20

I got out my time machine and went back to 1500 to ask him what his surname was. He said “Fuck that! Why didn’t you bring me a smart phone?”