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Comment by Tor3 | Hacker News Reader

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".

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Rembrandt van Rijn is known as Rembrandt. Vincent van Gogh is known as van Gogh.

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.

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.

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.

Where do Dick Van Dyke fit in all of this?

He is far too alive for us to worry about that.

(Luckily, these posts are explicitly datestamped .. !)

Yes, but this articles is written in our time, not his. So why not just "Leonardo da Vinci" as a compromise?

That doesn't change how he's known today though

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".

Shouldn't Icelanders look more at last names, considering the inbreeding issues on that small island?

Apparently they have an app that citizens can check to make sure they're not dating a relative.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/kissing-cousins-icelandic-a...

There's not much point looking at last names, because they change for every generation. There aren't any "family names" as such.

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