Orlando

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A large city in central Florida famous for its theme parks ; a masculine first name of Italian origin, equivalent to Roland
2. A major urban center in central Florida known for its amusement parks ; a male given name of Italian origin matching the name Roland
3. A well-known city in the central part of Florida renowned for its theme parks ; a masculine personal name derived from the Italian form of Roland

Etymology: Orlando, Florida, owes its name to a man who may have died there without ever knowing a city would be built around his memory, and the name itself travels back to a medieval French hero. The Italian form "Orlando" is the source of the English personal name, and it is a variant of "Roland," the legendary nephew of Charlemagne who died at Roncevaux in the epic "Chanson de Roland." The Italian and English forms descend from the same Germanic root, making them doublets, two separate borrowings of a single word. The Florida city was known as Jernigan when it was settled in 1844. In 1857 it took the name Orlando, probably honoring Orlando Reeves, a soldier killed in the area by Seminoles in 1835. The choice of an Italian-derived name for a frontier settlement fits a common nineteenth-century habit of borrowing romantic names from epic literature for American towns.