Rocinante 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 (as he said to himself) 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
The Name of the Rose The name of the central character, William of Baskerville, alludes both to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes (compare "The Hound of the Baskervilles" – also, Adso's description of William in the beginning of the book resembles, almost word for word, Dr. Watson's description of Sherlock Holmes when he first makes his acquaintance in "A Study in Scarlet") and to William of Ockham (see the next section). The name of the narrator, his apprentice Adso of Melk is among other things a pun on Simplicio from Galileo Galilei's "Dialogue"; Adso deriving from "ad Simplicio" ("to Simplicio"). Adso's putative place of origin,