What nationality was the aviator Roland Garros?

Roland Garros was French. His full name was Eugène Adrien Roland Georges Garros, and he became famous as an early aviator and wartime pilot rather than as a tennis player.

Born in 1888 on Réunion, then a French colony, Garros earned his pilot’s license in France and became known for daring aviation achievements. In 1913, he completed the first nonstop flight across the Mediterranean Sea, flying from southern France to Tunisia. The journey made him an international celebrity and helped establish aviation as a field of public fascination.

During the First World War, Garros served as a French military pilot. He helped develop a system that allowed a machine gun to fire through an aircraft’s propeller by using deflector plates. He was captured by Germany in 1915, escaped in 1918, and returned to combat. He was killed in an aerial battle near the end of the war, one day before his thirtieth birthday.

The tennis stadium and tournament were named Roland-Garros in his memory. The name therefore refers to a French aviator, not a tennis champion or the name of a country’s tennis style.