[olddustytrail]

Inevitable pedantry: his name is Leonardo, not "da Vinci".

"da" means "from", or in this sense "of". So just as you might say "Jesus of Nazareth" you say "Leonardo of Vinci".

You would never say something like "...and Of Nazareth said...", so likewise it's weird to say "da Vinci invented..."

[alecst]

I asked an Italian native speaker about this and she said she calls him “da Vinci.” She has a PhD in linguistics, and in general she’s pretty precise with her language. She doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with it. Just as a datapoint.

[dokem]

You’re wrong because everyone in the English speaking world refers to him as da Vinci which means da Vinci is the name that refers to the person Leonardo. That’s how names and language work. Now back to playing with my LEGOs.