The Tensor (who JonW apparently knows!) talks about recent griping about calling Leonardo da Vinci da Vinci * (”da Vinci” means from Vinci - some ask “would you call Jesus of Nazareth *?”).
In composing this post, I’m also reminded of The Tensor’s thoughts on stupid linguistics tricks - the only way to get the bits above marked with asterisks to parse correctly is to put them in italics, or bury them in an avalanche of quotation marks…
</ling geekout>
Posted on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 at 3:21 pm. Categories: Interesting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can also leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
5 Responses to “On of Nazareth”
K Says:
May 17th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
But Jesus is referred to as “Jesus of Nazareth!” All the time! So that’s not a very good analogy.
Aaron Says:
May 17th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
That’s exactly the point, K. Nobody calls Jesus of Nazareth of Nazareth (note the italics, both here and in the post) - but we’re fine calling Leonardo da Vinci da Vinci…
K Says:
May 17th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
Oh, I completely misread that, oops. Yeah, that is kind of weird. But there are plenty of last names that mean to be from a particular place (of course, I can’t think of any offhand), so I still don’t think it’s completely parallel.
Danny Silverman Says:
May 29th, 2006 at 9:51 am
In the book he is about equally referred to as “Leonardo” as “da Vinci,” so I wonder if it was the publisher’s choice of title, a nod to popular sentiment, or something else entirely. Fortunately or un-, the name “Leonardo” is less specific today than, “da Vinci.” With the latter, people generally know to whom you are referring.
On the other hand, Jesus is a pretty well-known guy.
Danny Silverman Says:
May 29th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Oh, I suspect the blog title “Tenser said the Tensor” is a straight reference to the Alfred Bester novel The Demolished Man, which I thouroughly enjoyed and recommend, and which was fairly groundbreaking when it was published. It is a “police procedural,” typical of the 50s, but with the marvelous twist of being set in the 2300s, and with the distinction of being the first book to receive the Hugo Award for outstanding science fiction. “Tenser said the Tensor” is a snippet of advertising jingle that was an important aspect of the pre-planning for pulling off a murder in an age when murder is unthinkable because psychics are everywhere.
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