The fictional dog in J.R.R. Tolkien’s children’s story Roverandom is named Rover.
Roverandom began as a story Tolkien told his children after one of his sons lost a toy dog on a beach. In the tale, Rover is a small, magically transformed dog who has adventures involving wizards, the Moon, and the sea. Tolkien wrote the story in the 1920s, but it was not published until 1998, long after his death.
The title combines the character’s name with “random,” reflecting the story’s playful movement through different settings. Roverandom is separate from Tolkien’s major Middle-earth narratives and is not the same character as Huan, the great hound in The Silmarillion, or Bill the Pony in The Lord of the Rings. Its origins show how ordinary family events could inspire Tolkien’s imaginative storytelling.