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
Mu Arae d Mu Arae d Mu Arae d, also known as HD 160691 d, later named Rocinante, is an extrasolar planet orbiting the star Mu Arae of the constellation Ara. In July 2014 the International Astronomical Union launched a process for giving proper names to certain exoplanets and their host stars. The process involved public nomination and voting for the new names. In December 2015, the IAU announced the winning name was Rocinante for this planet. The winning name was submitted by the Planetario de Pamplona, Spain. Rocinante was the horse of the lead character of the novel "El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don