Serendipia

Publicado en Venecia en 1557

Admitida por la RAE, el término serendipia ya aparece en el diccionario con la siguiente acepción:

1. f. Hallazgo valioso que se produce de manera accidental o casual. El descubrimiento de la penicilina fue una serendipia.

Y con la siguiente explicación:

Adaptado del inglés serendipity, y este de Serendip, hoy Sri Lanka, por alusión a la fábula oriental The Three Princes of Serendip 'Los tres príncipes de Serendip'.

[Elizabeth Jamison Hodges

Origen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Princes_of_Serendip

The Three Princes of Serendip 

is the English version of the Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo published by Michele Tramezzino in Venice in 1557. Tramezzino claimed to have heard the story from one Christophero Armeno who had translated the Persian fairy tale into Italian adapting Book One of Amir Khusrau's Hasht-Bihisht[1] of 1302. The story first came to English via a French translation, and now exists in several out-of-print translations.[2] Serendip is the Persian and Urdu name for Sri Lanka, which was adopted from Sanskrit Suvarnadweepa or golden island or originally from Tamil "Seren deevu" . In contrast, some trace the etymology to Simhaladvipa which literally translates to "Dwelling-Place-of-the-Sinhalese-race".

The story has become known in the English speaking world as the source of the word serendipity, coined by Horace Walpole because of his recollection of the part of the "silly fairy tale" where the three princes by "accidents and sagacity" discern the nature of a lost camel.[3] In a separate line of descent, the story was used by Voltaire in his 1747 Zadig, and through this contributed to both the evolution of detective fiction and also to the self-understanding of scientific method.]