Meaning and history
The name means “wand elf” in Old Norse, from gandr, meaning “wand, staff, magic, monster,” and alfr, meaning “elf.” It appears as Gandálfr, the name of a dwarf in the Völuspá, a 13th-century Scandinavian manuscript in the Poetic Edda, and was later borrowed by J. R. R. Tolkien for a wizard in The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954). In Tolkien’s fictional Sindarin language, his name is Mithrandir, meaning “grey pilgrim.”