Gandalf is one of the main people in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He is a wizard: old, sharp-eyed, often kind, sometimes suddenly stern. He wears a tall hat and a long grey cloak (later white), carries a staff, and smokes a pipe. In the story he does not sit in a tower doing party tricks; he walks the roads, notices what others miss, and pulls hobbits, kings, and frightened friends through a long war. Children and grown-ups all over the world know the name from the books and the films, so it is used as a shorthand for a wise, slightly mysterious guide. It is a character’s name, not a job title: you can say someone is “a bit of a Gandalf”, jokingly, but the capital letter still belongs to Tolkien’s wizard.