Variant of Roland, from Germanic elements meaning 'famous land' or 'renowned in the land.'
Rolland is the French spelling variant of Roland, preserving the double-l that marks its passage through Old French from the original Germanic "Hrodland" — fame and land combined into a name that medieval Europe made legendary. While the English-speaking world settled largely on Roland and the American vernacular sometimes shortened it to Rollin, Rolland remained the preferred spelling in French Canada and among Francophone communities throughout Louisiana, New England, and the Great Lakes region, giving it a specific cultural geography within North America. The name's literary and historical pedigree is immense.
Beyond the Chanson de Roland, the name echoed through Renaissance epic poetry, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516) being the most elaborate retelling, in which Orlando (the Italian form) becomes a knight driven mad by unrequited love — a very different, more psychologically complex treatment than the stoic medieval original. In the twentieth century, the French Nobel laureate Romain Rolland (1866–1944) gave the name an intellectual luster: his ten-volume novel Jean-Christophe was a landmark of European humanism, and his pacifism during World War I took considerable courage. Rolland carries the weight of all these associations gracefully.
It is a name that has been warrior, lover, and philosopher across its centuries of use — a remarkable range for a sequence of seven letters. Its double-l gives it a subtle visual elegance that the single-l Roland lacks.