Rocinante is Don Quixote's horse in the two-part 1605/1615 novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. In many ways, Rocinante is not only Don Quixote's horse, but also his double: like Don Quixote, he is awkward, past his prime, and engaged in a task beyond his capacities.
Etymology
Rocín in Spanish means a work horse or low-quality horse, but can also mean an illiterate or rough man. There are similar words in English, French, Portuguese, and Italian. The etymology is uncertain. The name is a complex pun. In Spanish, ' has several meanings and can function as a standalone word as well as a suffix. One meaning is "before" or "previously". Another is "in front of". As a suffix, -ante in Spanish is adverbial; rocinante refers to functioning as, or being, a rocín. "Rocinante", then, follows Cervantes' pattern using ambiguous, multivalent words, which is common throughout the novel. Rocinante's name, then, signifies his change in status from the "old nag" of before to the "foremost" steed. As Cervantes describes Don Quixote's choice of name: nombre a su parecer alto, sonoro y significativo de lo que había sido cuando fue rocín, antes' de lo que ahora era, que era antes y primero de todos los rocines del mundo''—"a name, to his thinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of his condition as a hack before he became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the hacks in the world". In chapter 1, Cervantes describes Don Quixote's careful naming of his steed:
Four days were spent in thinking what name to give him, because it was not right that a horse belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to adapt it so as to indicate what he had been before belonging to a knight-errant, and what he then was."
The progressive rock bandRush sing about the ship Rocinante in both "Cygnus X-1 Book I: The Voyage" and "Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres" on the albums A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres respectively.
Rocinante is the name of Monsignor Quixote's car in Graham Greenes's 1982 novel Monsignor Quixote
In the novel seriesThe Expanse and its TV series adaptation, the Rocinante is the new name given to a Martian gunship that becomes the primary setting for much of the series.
In the television seriesOnce Upon A Time, which is based upon retellings of literary classics, Rocinante is the name of the horse belonging to a young Regina/Evil Queen.
Finnish actor Jukka Leisti created a children's tv-program around his knight character Tuttiritari. Tuttiritari rides "a horse" called Rusinante. The name of the horse is a word play—a blend word or a portmanteau—a combination of Rosinante and the Finnish word for raisin, rusina.
