What is the name of the whale in Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick'?

The whale in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is named Moby Dick. He is a gigantic white sperm whale pursued across the oceans by Captain Ahab, whose obsessive hunt drives the novel’s plot.

Moby Dick is more than a conventional animal character. His whiteness becomes a symbol that different characters interpret in radically different ways: it can suggest purity, terror, blankness, nature, or the unknowable. Melville deliberately leaves the whale open to multiple meanings rather than reducing him to a simple villain.

The novel was published in 1851 under the full title Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. It was initially a commercial disappointment, but later became one of the central works of American literature. The story is narrated by Ishmael, a sailor who joins the whaling ship Pequod and survives the disastrous expedition.

Readers sometimes answer “the White Whale,” but that is a description, not the whale’s proper name. “Leviathan” is a biblical and literary sea-monster reference, while “Jaws” belongs to the shark in Peter Benchley’s novel and the later film. The hyphen in Moby-Dick is part of Melville’s title, although the character’s name is often written simply as Moby Dick.