Italian poet

The name of the wonderful and deserving winner of the 2021 Arc De Triomphe worries me. Why the letter 'R' at the end of the first noun? No-final-R Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) was another Italian poet who thought as big as Hollywood and wrote incredibly long epic poems about knights in shining armors and their girlfriends, like his (better) predecessor Ludovico Ariosto. I have asked a few Teutonic friends if "Torquator" means anything technical, colloquial or otherwise in German, to no avail. So word play is out. Do only impressionable and...