Quentin Tarantino clarifies that his son is not named after Leonardo DiCaprio

Quentin Tarantino and his wife, Daniella Pick, welcomed their first child in February 2020—a son named Leo.

"We almost didn't name him that because people would assume that I named him after Leonardo DiCaprio," the Oscar-winning filmmaker told Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday night (June 22). "Nothing wrong with that, but I didn't. He's named after my wife's grandfather, but also because just, in our hearts, he was our little lion."

DiCaprio has acted in two Tarantino films, beginning with Django Unchained (2012) and most recently Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood (2019). Each won two Oscars. Tarantino claimed best writing, original screenplay for the former, while the latter earned DiCaprio a nomination for best actor.

The 58-year-old then moved on to discuss his forthcoming debut novel Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood, due out June 29; as Deadline put it last November, the book "breathes new life into the characters and the premise of a film that got 10 Oscar nominations and won the best supporting actor Oscar for Brad Pitt."

Tarantino further explained with Kimmel by harkening back to how much he loved movie novelizations that used to be in the 7-Eleven when he was younger and calling them the "first adult novels" he read. ("I read movie novelizations for movies I never saw.")

"My pretext with this is that it's a novelization printed in 1978," he added. "So, we wanted to have it look and feel like that."

Watch Tarantino's full conversation with Kimmel below.