What is the name of Sancho Panza's donkey?

Sancho Panza’s donkey is commonly called Dapple in English translations of Don Quixote. In Cervantes’s original Spanish, the animal is named Rucio, a word associated with a gray or gray-brown coat. Dapple is therefore an established English translation rather than an unrelated replacement name.

The donkey suits Sancho’s practical, earthbound character. While Don Quixote rides the aging horse Rocinante and imagines himself as a grand knight, Sancho depends on his humble mount during their travels. Their contrasting animals reinforce the comic difference between Don Quixote’s heroic fantasies and Sancho’s everyday realism.

The donkey is also involved in a continuity joke. Rucio disappears during the Sierra Morena episodes in Part One, even though the published narrative initially fails to explain what happened. Later editions and Part Two play with this inconsistency, turning the missing donkey into one of the novel’s many self-aware comic details.

A common mix-up is Rocinante, which is Don Quixote’s horse. Pegasus and Bucephalus belong to other legendary or historical traditions, not to Sancho’s adventures.