QUOTE : Acknowledgements Reading Group Notes Timeline About the Author By Ian Rankin Copyright Serendipity. According to the dictionary, it means the ability to make ‘happy chance finds’. Serendip was the old name for Ceylon. Horace Walpole is credited with coining the term, after the fairy tale ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’, whose titular heroes were always stumbling across things they weren’t looking for.