Leonardo DiCaprio was named Leonardo because his pregnant mother was looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting in a museum in Italy when DiCaprio first kicked.
DiCaprio Named After Da Vinci Museum Kick
Some celebrity name origin stories are carefully crafted PR. This one? A genuine moment of cosmic coincidence in an Italian art museum that connected two Leonardos across five centuries.
When Irmelin Indenbirken was pregnant with her first child, she and her husband George DiCaprio—an underground comix artist and counterculture figure—took their honeymoon to Florence, Italy. They visited the renowned Uffizi Gallery, home to some of the world's greatest Renaissance masterpieces. While Irmelin stood admiring a Leonardo da Vinci painting, she felt her baby kick furiously for the first time.
George, being an artist himself, saw this as more than coincidence. "That's our boy's name," he declared. And on November 11, 1974, Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles.
The Artist Who Inspired the Name
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was the quintessential Renaissance polymath—painter, inventor, scientist, and visionary. The Uffizi Gallery houses several of his works, including the Annunciation, an early painting depicting the angel Gabriel's visit to Mary. Whether this was the specific painting Irmelin was viewing remains unconfirmed, but the gallery's da Vinci collection made it a likely candidate for the fateful moment.
The name choice was significant. In 1974 Los Angeles, "Leonardo" wasn't exactly common. When DiCaprio started auditioning as a teenager, his agent actually told him the name was "too ethnic" and suggested he change it to something more conventionally American like "Lenny Williams." DiCaprio refused.
From Cosmic Sign to Cosmic Irony
The story gets even better: In 2017, it was announced that Leonardo DiCaprio would play Leonardo da Vinci in a biopic based on Walter Isaacson's biography of the Renaissance master. A full-circle moment if there ever was one.
DiCaprio has shared this origin story multiple times over the years, including in a 2014 NPR interview and with British publication The People in 1998. His father's artistic sensibility and belief in signs shaped not just his son's name, but arguably his destiny—George encouraged young Leo's interest in acting and supported his early career.
The Uffizi Connection
The Uffizi Gallery remains one of the world's most visited museums, attracting over 4 million visitors annually. Thousands of pregnant women have surely walked its halls since 1974, but only one felt her future Oscar-winner kick in front of a da Vinci masterpiece.
It's a reminder that sometimes the best stories aren't manufactured—they're just weird little moments of synchronicity that happen to shape the course of someone's life. George DiCaprio trusted his gut, kept the name, and the rest is Hollywood history.