Why do people call Jeanne d'Arc...Joan of Arc but they don't call Leonardo Da Vinci...Leonard of Vince?

I too was wondering about names of people in my language courses several years ago. In fact I asked similar questions about names and titles.

The answer varies however. It seems that whatever names or titles were most popular and gave greater recognition in those time periods, those were chosen. Keep in mind however names and titles were earned by prestigious men and women and heroes alike.

People in those days received name changes due to some heroic event or episode credited unto them.

Differences in translations between languages bring about much of the variations we see in names and titles of our heroes.

But which translation of a title is widely accepted seems to be strongly political.

Who to figure, in one country, things are said and done differently than in another. So it goes with titles bestowed upon our worldly heroes.

Popular preference seems to determine what names people will use to call other people.

Sometimes people choose to keep a native name but other times they prefer to use a translation in their own language instead.

In English, popular preference has preferred "Joan of Arc" instead of "Jeanne d'Arc" although many other languages do use the French form of her name (eg. Dutch, German) or something close (eg. Russian Zhanna D'ark; Albanian Zhan d'Ark). However, we do have some company in the Spanish who call her by their native name of Juana de Arco.

Have you heard of the Viking explorer Eric the Red? Neither we or the French call him by his native Norse name, Eiríkr Rauði. The French call him "Eirk Le Rouge." And everyone in the West knows Confucius by his Latinized name and not by his native Chinese name, Kung Fu Tse.

So there is a lot of arbitrariness and inconsisentency in how people chose names that just seems to exist naturally in us.

Both are literal translations of the name.

I guess it is the same reason we call Christopher Columbus, Christopher Columbus and not by his Italian name Cristoforo Colombo.

Leonardo Da Vinci has a better ring to it than Leonard of Vince.

Here is a page that explains Joan of Arc's name:

http://www.maidofheaven.com/joanofarc_jeannedarc_j...

because calling her "Joan of Arc" was a mistake that became a habit