What host names do you use?

I name my devices after greek gods based on what I'm going in life at the time or after what their purpose is.

I named my first gaming PC "Poseidon" when I was doing ship related work. Now it's my server.

My gaming PC is "Asclepius", the Greek god of healing. Built when I got into healthcare.

Hermes, god of messeges, is my lil pi that helps with routing (pihole, pivpn, nginx).

My HTPC is Dionysus, Greek god of wine and parties.

My thinkpad is Persephone cus it looks good but doesn't do much. I might rename it.

The services that I run on these are just named "device-service" e.g. hermes-nginx

fuck, this is way better than my current naming scheme of "customer-<devicepurpose>, I'm stealing it for my next setup.
I do the same but Egyptian

MacBook Pro: mbp.domain.com
Raspberry Pi 2: rpi2.domain.com
Raspberry Pi 3: rpi3.domain.com
Raspberry Pi 4: rpi4.domain.com
Raspberry Pi 5: rpi5.domain.com
(Yes, I have one of each.)
Synology DS415+: ds415.domain.com
Phone: iphone.domain.com
Watch: watch.domain.com
AppleTV: appletv.domain.com
Nintendo Switch: switch.domain.com

I'm missing the rpi1 in that list. Please fix ASAP.
- That one was called just rpi.domain.com, but didn't stand the test of time...
I envy you so much
- Wait until I tell you about all the small issues this zoo of devices brings with it… haha.
What happens if you add another RPi?
- I might rename them. So, e.g. if I’d add another Pi5, the existing one would become rpi5-1 and the new one rpi5-2.

Server (big iron): Bender

Desktop (main character): Fry

Laptop (for accounting): Hermes

Netbook (small and dumb): Nibbler

Phone (held to my head): BrainSlug

HTPC (one big viewport): Leela

This is my scheme as well! Pretty much to the t. Except my HTPC is hypnotoad and nibbler is my NAS.
- OMG Hypnotoad HTPC is so much better! Why didn't I thnnk of that?

Three-letter words that can be typed with one hand, since I have to type them frequently.

$ egrep "^([qwertasdfgzxcvb]{3}|[yuiophjkllnm]{3})$" /usr/share/dict/words

Username checks out
- Yes, yours too.
- You have a mighty big hand if you reach l and a with the same one
- ? A and L are on opposite ends of the keyboard.
This is the way.
Hmm, this wouldn't work well for me since I use Dvorak. All the vowels are on the left and the most common consonants are on the right.

My consonant options on the left hand are: py (top) and jkxb (bottom).

Fedora is called fed. Ubuntu is ubu. Laptop is laptop 🌝

Naming scheme like John Wick with his dog.
What happens if you decide to use Fedora or Ubuntu on two devices?

My devices are cringely named after songs in Haken's discography.

Desktop is MESSIAH. Laptop is AFFINITY. Phone is NIGHTINGALE. Steam Deck is SHAPESHIFTER. Router (and its WAP) is PORTALS. My NAS is the only one that falls outside of this, it's generically (last name)NetNAS. I should rename it, but I don't want to break anything 😅

Eta: changed my NAS' hostname is ARCHITECT. Nothing broke! Yay for me.

This is my favorite of the thread.

You can even call one Host, haha.
- Shit, you're right!

My phone's name is "Samsung Smart Fridge™" because I think it's hilarious if someone is looking at hotspots or network info and go "what the hell is a fridge doing here-"

That's hilarious. Now I wanna set up a Wi-Fi hotspot with that SSID at a local library or something for lulz.

Something like "LG Dishwasher".

Huh. I thought for sure someone else would be using my scheme.

LAN computers are all Tolkien swords: sting, orcrist, gurthang, glamdring, etc. If I run out of swords, I'll start adding other weapons: aeglost, the spear; dailir, the arrow. We don't get a lot of named battle axes, which I always thought weird; I'd think dwarves of all people would forge legendary axes, and certainly name them.

My WiFi and VPN networks are forests in Middle Earth: fangorn, bindbole, dimholt, lothlorien, etc. The only exception is my LAN itself which is... "lan". Because short.

My cloud VPSes are named after Greek Titans: hyperion, phaethusa, tethys, etc.

Mobile devices have whatever names they come with, because they're so ephemeral.

I like your schema. I've used something similar. My hosts have always been sci-fi space/time ships/stations, user accounts are characters from or Captain's of said vessels. Over the years I've had a TARDIS, Serenity, Moya, Out of Bands II, Galactica, Millennium Falcon, Rocinante, etc. It's usually whatever I happen to be discovering or binging at the time I setup the machine. For nearly a decade the TARDIS was my server/NAS because it was bigger on the inside that survived through several generations of smaller devices like laptops and raspberry Pi's named after smaller lighter vessels like Serenity and Rocinante.
- Thanks! I've learned in jobs over the years that there are two good ways to choose names:
  
  Descriptive acronyms: AppDev01Loc01. They're useful in business and large teams, and dull as shit. But practical.
  
  Mythos with a lot of variation. Characters from your favorite novel is usually bad, because you quickly run out of names. Mythos are usually good, dinosaurs... anything with a lot of variation.
  
  "Sci fi starships" is a great one! Lots of source material there; the categories basically fall out by themselves. That's a great choice.
In the past, I used Gimli's family tree for server names. My main server was called "Thorin". I think I had used Thrain and Gloin.

These days I use Union generals from the civil war:

Sherman - NAS, media server, nextcloud. Thomas - reverse proxy, adguard1. Ellsworth - arr stack. Sheridan - backup server. dockerhost01 - because naming your servers after their function makes a lot more sense.
- In the past, I used Gimli's family tree for server names.
  
  Oh, that's good.
  
  Middle Earth is a great source for this stuff, b/c Tolkien filled out the world like a historian.

Desktop: HAL9000

laptop: HALjr

Phone: HALnano

Then HALserver, HALprinter (octoprint), HALhome (home assistant) and so on... Big fan of Stanley Kubrick haha

Tried to get the hal9.ooo domain name but it was taken...

Edit: I use Dave as the username, so that in the terminal it is dave@hal9000, which just seems appropriate

My PC was HAL_9000 for over a decade. It got tedious to type, so it's now just "box."
- Ha I like it. Yeah I skipped the underscore/hyphen for that reason.

All swearwords, all the time. Generally puns on the servers purpose.

I'm in the name after location and function fraction. All but my printer, he's named Cthulhu because printers are a menace to humanity and it supports wake-on-LAN.

Amen

I usually name my devices after Greek gods and godesses; Artemis, Hermes, Metis, Athena, Apollo etc.

Shit I thought I was so damn novel. Blast you.

I am a simple person.

My PC: Panda
My wifes PC: notpanda
Docker VM: dockerhost.home

Uhg y'all actually have creative names, here are mine:

My homelab - Pero-base
My main PC - Pero-main
My laptop - Pero-portable
My other server - Pero-web

I swear I'm not a narcissist.

Nah, just a huge fan of barley tea.

@Krik devnull, devzero, devrandom
obv, devnull runs fileserver

You're a monster. My scps would go nowhere
Nice!

Is devrandom your router or something?
- @sugar_in_your_tea pihole and searxng :)

My home network is called The IT Clowd with these devices:

Moss - physical server
Roy - physical server
Jen - vm - main docker host
Richmond - vm - *arr stack
Denholm - vm - monitoring, logging
Douglas - vm - Home Assistant stack
Basement - vm - development server

Lol your arr stack.

"Jen what did you do?! I told you never open that door!"

All of mine are animals, chosen similar to their functions (ie my 2-in-1 is "weasel", my Chimera VM buildhost is a busy/hard-working "beaver" (busy "bumblebee" was taken by my old Gentoo binhost VM), "orca" is my media server (big black PC case), "bluejay" is my rpi (tiny, in a blue TARDIS case), etc.

It's fun! (I have too many computers.)

I use Roman gods. Juno, Jupiter, Pluto, etc. I have a beelink minipc that I named Mellona, the Roman goddess of honey 😆

I use Egyptian gods!

I use zerg units.

NAS is named Nydus
Homelab with a GPU is Hydralisk
Jail instance that I can use for random cron jobs is Drone

"Scale with more ProxMox nodes? Don't you mean

S̸̡̗͉̰̭̬͙̲̩̖̫͔̹̓͛̓̈́̋̈́̊̂̕͡P̶̫̱̜͌́̒̐̄̈́́͐̒̅̆̎͋́͘A̴͙̬͇̐̋̓̋̇̋̒̏̀̀͒͡W̷̡̧̙̭̫̅̐͂̿̋̔̏͗͗̔̄͌̈́͝N̷̡̨̙͉̜̲̗̽͆̊̒̽̐̏̾̇̊̋̓̎͝ ̷̛̟͗̈́Ṃ̸̛͖̤̖̐̇́́̏̐́̋Ơ̶̼̤̣̊̎̔͑̈̈́̇̊͝A̸̧̢͇̣̰̫̙̼͈͈͈͉̼͙̻͑̽̿̊̌͝Ŗ̵̜̦͇̲̜̼͕̞̮̱̝̬̯̓͒̀͛̅͐̌͡͠ͅ ̵̧̺͕̖̘̟̭̥̳̪͖̗̤̞̎̈́̔͊͝O̴͓̼̥͆̈́̓̓͗̐̆̐́̀͂̕V̵̡͎͈͈̗̞̺̭̘͓̬̻̦̙͉̿̎ͅE̷̓̃̄̿̓̒̈́̇͋̑͘ͅŖ̵̛͖̣̼̘̜̹̻̜͍͉̫͍̞̉͆́̐̍̓̊̈͜L̴̛͉̜̩̞͇͕̞̟͎̱͛̇̎̓͝ͅO̸̡̧̢̯̭̟̝̺̩͔̬̜̼͚̬̽́̇̃̌̏̎̏́́̓͒̅̓͘R̷̨̫͍̹̗̮̹̯͆͗̕ͅD̶̨̡̪̼͕͇̻̲͊͑́͋̈̈́̔̅͠S̷̥̼̘̾̽̆̿̃̈́̾͆̾̏͝͡???"
- Hah, they're TrueNAS BSD jails, but yes, now I need to figure out how to rename the "Jails" tab in my UI to overlords.
  
  Also, all the extra work my self-hosting endeavors generate is "creep".

Y'all are too creative for me... I have:

poweredge-r520-0
poweredge-t620-0
poweredge-t620-1
pi4-0
pi3b-0
pi3b-1
pi3b-2
pi3b-3
vostro-3525-0
ideapad-c340-0

Finally someone who actually uses a Vostro. Always found that name unreasonably funny.
This is basically how I do it too.

I used to be more creative but then I got in the habit of running more servers and swapping hardware more frequently so it got harder to remember what hardware I was actually connecting to. Now they get hardware based names and everything else is named by service-based Ansible roles.
I have to ask, why start with 0? I never understood this with infrastructure. I would do something like 00000 if I did numbers so it would be easy to sort, but I always started with 1. I'm just curious.
- One possibility could be because in conventional "computer counting" in (most) coding languages, it starts at zero. Like if I make an array of things
  
  [monke, chimp, peanut]
  
  monke would be [0]
  
  chimp would be[1]
  
  peanut would be [2]
  
  Once I learned about this concept I started naming enumerated things from 0 usually just to keep a kind of consistency. Maybe I think if it's a habit, I won't make those mistakes as often with code. I dunno. :p

Fictional planet names (mostly early Star Wars because I’m old): Dantooine, Naboo, Tatooine, Jabba (not a planet, but server for “data storage” hence smuggler reference), Bespin and odd one out Arrakis (laptop).

Jabba could've been NalHutta

Backup: VEEAM01
DC: DC1
VM for taxes and other stuff I don't want on my main pc: ZAHLNIX01 (tl: not paying anything)
NAS01: My NAS file share VM
TEST01: Testing VM
Appoxo-PC2: My main PC (as it's mark 2)
Proxmox host: PVE2 (I planned a cluster but have no other nuc to use in the cluster)
NAS: Current jellyfin and main docker host
PiNAS02: My Raspberry Pi 4

As you see: Very creative.

Omnigon: refers to my network and server overall
Terragon: Utility desktop
Pyrogon: Gaming desktop
Aquagon: Laptop
Aerogon: Phone
Sonogon: RPi sound server
Minigon: Cyberdeck

Where's Demogorgon?

My laptop is called xontros-gatos, which in my native language means fat-cat. Similarly, my server is called server-cat, a small laptop that I have for testing stuff is called small-cat and a new laptop that I just got is called fatter-cat.

I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS

I bet your whole network is connected by CAT. :P

When I was 18 and in my first job, my boss and I installed the very first windows NT file servers for a major uk public sector organisation. They were all named after beers that we'd drunk on team nights out. We had Blacksheep, Tanglefoot, Snecklifter, and so on. They were in a test environment so it didn't matter. Until they went into production...

That was over 30 years ago now, but I still usually resort to beers.

Slightly unrelated but when my family was remodeling our kitchen in the home I grew up in, we pulled the oven out and found the side of the cabinet had an interesting scrawl on it that must've been from one of the builders:

"When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer."

I found it so amusing wondering what the motive behind that was. So I guess your hostnames kinda reminded me of hidden beer-related tradesman graffiti. XD

I use Alps bigger peaks for the hosts like:

Castore
Polluce
Lyskamm
Gnifetti
etc.

(yes, mainly from Monte Rosa) and smaller peaks for the VMs:

Grigna
Grignetta
Resegone
Cornizzolo
Palanzone
etc.

I've named my last few computers after planets, with disks named after moons.

When I worked at Microsoft they had all kinds of clusters - OurGang with Spanky, Darla, Alfalfa... Addams with Gomez etc, Disney with Mickey, etc.

Same, all celestial names.
I'm similar, but it's internal drives are planets, while external drives are moons.
- When I run out of the solar system I'm going to move on to Star Wars.
Nice. I might copy your idea.

I only have 1 box really, it's named Hal. Seems helpful, not entirely sure if it's on my side. Could murder me. I keep an analog shotgun next to it.

You had me digging through old hosts files and ssh configs to find some of these.

I try to name them something that resembles what they do or has something to do with what their purpose is.

Short is good, and if it can match more than one of the machine's purpose/os/software/look, the better.

If it's some sort of personal machine, it gets a personal name

Phones

traveller
pawn
rook
bishop

Virtual Workstations

boxy
moxy
sandbox
cloud
ship lxc container host
dock docker host

Laptops

ciel Razer blade stealth with a rainbow LED keyboard
arc runs arch.
lled is a dell

Desktops

bench
citadel
bastion

AI from fiction:

HAL M.O.T.H.E.R AM Jarvis

I’ve always done characters from Beatles songs

Walrus
Martha
Her-Majesty
Submarine
MissLizzy
Blackbird
NowhereMan
SgtPepper
Jojo

I named mine after Rocket League cars.

Octane (main desktop)
Breakout (laptop)
Dominus (laptop; older, larger)

Desktop: Octiron
Laptop: Octogen
Phone: Octarine

I use some generic names.

Phone: phone
Current Laptop: fedora
Old laptop: laptop
Router: openwrt

Lol, it's 20x easier when you're looking at a dump from nmap.

Man I’m lame.

Used to be {env}-function##

Now it’s {env}-{vlanlocation}-function##

VLAN location such as DMZ, Infra, Jump for jump boxes, IOTSec or IOTInsec, Etc

After a long career in tech, one of the things I start to push for when I inevitably take over ops at my new job is to eliminate the silly names.

I don't do it because I hate fun, I do it because when someone yells, "Squirtle has dropped off the network!" I don't want to have to go consult a lookup table to learn that Squirtle is a staging environment postgres replica and not the primary billing database.

As a result, I apply the same standards to my home network without shame.
- It's the right move.
  
  I tell you, the first time you're sat in front of a CEO and an auditor and you have to explain why the big list of servers has a highlighted one called C-NT-PRIK-5 is when the fun stops.
  
  Explaining that it's short for 'customer network tester Mr. Prickles 5', and is actually a cacti server never really seems to help the situation.
  
  At least a few of the customers got a laugh out of it being on the reports!

I name mine after space! Earth, Moon, Mars, Saturn, etc...

You're naming them out of the stuff that specifically isn't space!
- "error: hostname must not be left blank." lol

my local hostnames are all David Bowie related. I have: outside (my laptop) blackstar (server 1) starman (server 2) heros (desktop1)

I went with alpha, beta, gamma ...

I name them after a female important character in whatever novel I'm enjoying when I set the system up. Back when I was single the female was important, now it is just tradition.

Since I like fantasy there are plenty of names available that are both pronounceable and nonsense.

Devices are named after characters from books I recently read, trying to match the name with the character of the book. But for virtual hosts for services I use their purpose (wiki, files, feed…) because I wasted too much time updating all the bookmarks last time I migrated to a new server.

Named mine after "objects" from Iain M. Banks' Culture Novels.

Currently I have:

gsv
hub
excession
drone

Nice and short, and map roughly to the "power level" of the hardware, so to speak.

And my Yubikeys are named after Special Circumstances agents 😄

I do marvel weapons/artifacts:

Phone: Mjolnir

Tablet: Stormbreaker

Laptop: Darkhold

Earbuds: I.C.E.R

Backup NAS: EyeOfAgamotto

Etc, etc 😅

I use readable names.

I'm using one system for testing purposes, so it's called testingPC.

Any containers are named for the container purposes, like my pihole is named pihole.

My system is so boring that any person were to pick it up after I got hit by a bus would be able to figure out everything.

My server is still called driveway because the install originated in an HP laptop a customer ran over with their car. Motherboard still worked though!

Physical machines (except my gaming PC) get Ratchet & Clank character names, and matching labels to go with it. My trusty sidekick Thinkpad T14 G1 is named "Clank". It runs LMDE.

VMs and LXCs get actually-descriptive names, since those are what run my services.

Gaming PC is called "Dagny"; it's a Scandinavian name for "a new day", since that PC was a gift to myself after my divorce. It's currently the only Windows machine in my house now.

I select hostnames drawn from the ordinal numerals of whatever language I happen to be trying to learn. Recently, it was Japanese so the first host was named "ichiro", the second as "jiro", the third as "saburo".

Those are the romanized spellings of the original kanji characters: 一郎, 二郎, and 三郎. These aren't the ordinal numbers per-se (eg first, second, third) but are an old way of assigning given names to male children. They literally mean "first son", "second son", "third son".

Previously, I did French ordinal numbers, and the benefit of naming this way is that I can enumerate a countably infinite number of hosts lol

That's an interesting take! Maybe I should do that too, when I restart learning Italian again.
Une, due, tre. Short and simple enough for me!
Or I go the masochist route and name them il ragazzo, la ragazza, i ragazzi and le ragazze. :D

I'm a fan of Composers. Current and past servers

Bach
- B.W.V. 565
- B.W.V. 1067
- B.W.V. 906
Mozart
Williams
Goldsmith
Zimmer
Arnold
Poledouris

New ones will be

Giacchino
Melumad

Services are just what they are.

git
Nextcloud
APC
etc

Cthulhu (primary server)
Azathoth (backup server)
Nyarlathotep (main laptop)
Shodan (router)
Theseus (rebuilt thinkpad x220)

I have been using Uranus moons for all my devices.

All my hostnames are after Zen Buddhist concepts, like shikaku, hongaku, mushin, wuwei, jiyu, etc. My printer is the only thing that breaks this trend, it is named pos

Why not Saṃsāra? Or maybe it's Rin'ne in Japanese?

Mine are named after the penguins from the Madagascar movie : Skipper, Private, Kowalski, and Rico.

Unfortunately there's only four so I often supplement with a suffix. For example, I've got an old windows laptop kicking around that is "rico-w"

... I should really commit to a naming scheme with a wider array of options.

Too many hosts.
Current scheme: British towns names. They are quite unique.

Do you have Fingeringhoe?
- Not yet 😅
  
  I had a scunthorpe.

The printer's name is Marvin, from HHGTTG.

It never wants to work and always complains.

I have three Proxmox nodes named: acid1, freebones, and a partially decommissioned node aptly named pve

acid1 was named from a sticker I got in a big collection. I was extra sold on the name when I did some research into acid1 tests.

freebones is from an inside joke from a GPT3.5 bot I terribly finetuned using my friend groups entire chat history. At one point the bot randomly said “algebra: you get free bones” and I kind of just ran with that

I have node named pve too. Small world.

Knowledge - Desktop
Enlighten - Laptop
Insanity - Server
Madness - Router

Gotta say, from what I've heard from the trenches, "insanity" and "madness" sound like fantastic names for printers or print servers, but the router also makes perfect sense! Lol

I think a similar post came few time ago, but no ashamed in my case. I use late pet names, for me as a tribute to their memory. Also, I try to put some logic in the name, like the squirrel name for a lightweight VM with not much services / workload or dog name for the reverse proxy (guardian function).

At home at least try to put some meaning, but at corporate environments as some have mention I got with the classical location-function-environment-XXX ^_U

Edit: some typos, because fat-fingers are a thing.

I tend to use food names, like tomato and sausage. But no potato, and definitely no apple.

I also utilize the special-use domain home.arpa for all my LAN systems, so accidental collisions are largely impossible.

I went with Willow related naming.

My main server and NAS is Madmartigan. Proxmox server is Willow. Headless gaming machine is Sorsha. Bedroom/office laptop is Elora Danan Living room laptop is High Aldwin Then two raspberry Pi's named Rool and Franjean.

I'm not even into Willow that much, I just wanted to find a world of characters I liked.

I go for the unoriginal but oh so simple: location-type-No

So HL-SRV-01 is "homelab server no 1"

HS-DSK-02 is "House desktop no2"

NA-LPT-01 is "Not Applicable" because this is my admin laptop that I expect to move around a lot so I always treat it as high-risk.

My only currently active machine is a laptop named buttwarmer as per my cat's suggestion.

All my personal devices are named "AHE"+n. So the abbreviation for "at heart engineer"+ a letter signifying the device. So my phone is "AHEM", my laptop is "AHEL", my desktop is "aheo" (O for office), my server is "ahes".

Not gonna lie before I read your handle I thought these were all named after ways of passively-aggressively clearing your throat. 😂

I use League of Legends regions. Except for one of them which is not a region but is called "lantern" after the Thresh's lantern in which souls are trapped.

I use the most boring names: LASTNAME-LAPTOP LASTNAME-PHONE LASTNAME-SERVER LASTNAME-ROUTER

But, living in tight suburban spaces, I'm never confused whether a device is mine or somebody else's.

Me too: firstname-device_model

alice-laptop_XPS

bob-cell_i12

I feel so boring!
- Shit. Here I thought I was creative.
  
  I use my alias butter. With either the device or the OS if I'm dual booting or distrohopping.

At home, colors Whatever color the purpose is.

ok so don't hate me but h001, h002, h003, and so on.

That's h for host. I also use n to number networks, and k to number physical keys.

I list them all in my keepassxc password database, where I can include any additional information.

With the prevalence of vms, docker containers, and docker networks, there's just too many things to name. By numbering them I can just side step that whole game.

Mine are all named for the colour of the case, or case accent when ambiguous, though network infrastructure items are named for their models, being the typical default.

I sometimes use A records or mDNS-SD for the actual services provided and use a *.home.arpa. domain.

Another theme at another site is native fauna and flora names.

No cringe, no pop culture.

I mostly use battlestar galactica ship names for my own hardware, but it's been mixed with boring '<function>.mydomain.foo' names as well. I should rename a bunch of stuff around and include them in my DNS.

I use Arthurian legend related stuff. Servers and desktops are locations. My portable devices are the names of swords. IoT devices are more explicitly descriptive since I won't need to type in, but it's more important to recognize them when I see them, like lightswitch-livingroom.

I set up my current desktop while reading Gaiman's The Sandman, so it's called Morpheus. Because I felt I needed to keep with the theme, my laptop is hades, my phone persephone, my server apollo, my router helios, the media centre PC is orpheus, the pi that boots and updates it outside of usage hours is eurydice, and the pi that runs home assistant is zeus (because it's responsible for light(n)ing.

Oh, and the work profile on my phone is sisyphos.

They're all some kind of machine. Steam deck: SteamMachineryV1

PC: ArchMachineryV2

Phone: Android_μMachine

Oddly enough my server goes by MonoVerse, which I named first and I guess it just stuck.

Lol, my server goes by "nas"

They're all some kind of machine. Steam deck: SteamMachineryV1

PC: ArchMachineryV2

Phone: Android_μMachine

Oddly enough my server goes by MonoVerse, which I named first and I guess it just stuck.

I name based on OS and location.

fedoraDesktop fedoraLaptop fedoraServer fedoraSchoolServer unraid qnap ubuntuServer

So many answers!!

First it was from planets from Ursula Le Guin's Hainish cycle.

Now it's the names of birds visiting my feeder: chickadee, titmouse, mockingbird, etc.

This is the most solar punk answer ever! XD Love it. That's really neat. I struggle so much with naming schemes.

Ubiquitous and Tiamat are my servers, Polyglotal for my home assistant voice endpoint, and some more. Points for the reference

I started with pirates of the carribean, so...

blackpearl: main PC Redpearl: raspberry pi Purplepearl: refurbished laptop. The router is ... router

The phone is zizidane ("donkey dick" in French, also playword on Zinedine Zidane).

Colour + noun:

redbug
bluecar
yellowboat

I gave up on cute or clever names a while ago; now I go with “storage0”, “router0”, “wap00”, “vmhost0”. Always with a numeric suffix because there will be a -1, -2 some day.

Places in video games is one option for me especially in cluster setups. EG cluster Tamriel has nodes Morrowind, Skyrim, Oblivion, etc.

"Have you been to the cloud ~~district~~ lately? Oh what am I saying, of course you haven't!"

I tend to use the names of angels for my personal devices (which surprisingly was inspired by this and not NGE)

For laptops I tend to use demons instead, just seems to fit better (which actually was inspired by Gundam IBO but this is the list)

For example:

desktop (Linux side) is Raziel
desktop (windows side 😩) is Azrael
main laptop is Gusion
eBay Thinkpad is Barbatos

Man I do variations of food truck that don’t exist. Example. Gaming pc : food station Phone:food truck Laptop: foodpad Server:foodcentre

I use concepts of games I like. Right now Alan Wake and Pacific Drive are the two of them.

Main Laptop: Typewriter
Steam deck: Poet
NAS: The Lake
Main Pc, that has become more a render station since I mostly work on a laptop and game on a steam deck: Lighthouse
Hue Hub: Light switch
Phone: Flashlight

But when I started to be more interested in networking and installed openwrt on my router, I was more infatuated by Pacific Drive:

Router: Outer Containment Wall
WiFi 5/2.4 Dual: ARDAnet
WiFi for iot: RemnantNet
GuestNet: OEZone
VPN: BreacherNet
Switch: SparkTower

So you wanna tell me your NAS is a Data Lake? ;D
- Indeed ;⁠)
You are missing the Muse for your Poet. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLxb7m0j5Jg
- You know what, next device I can (host)name will be the Muse. :D

Charybdis, hippo, appa, Momo, pabu

I've gone through lots of themes. These days it's mostly where things are or what they are for. Topshelf, closet, code lives on monkey, work laptop is named work. I've had more fun themes but the novelty wore off.

I call them after what service is running on it. E.g. openvpn.

Desktop: 30p87
Laptop: 30p87-laptop
Phone: 30p87-phone
Server: 30p87-server
DNS server at location bv: 30p87-dns-bv
DNS server at location db: 30p87-dns-db
Switch at location bv: 30p87-bottom-bv
Switch at location db: 30p87-bottom-db

Is that a new kind of masochism?
- Markdown only inserting newlines on two spaces certainly is. Apart from that, only practical.
Very German of you.

Usually, some type of pun based on the hardware.

Hardware hosts usually get a mix of hardware description and main use, e.g. en old Esprimo with Proxmox is esprimox. Virtual hosts are garden themed - auth server is mycel, monitoring will be called canopy once I move it, VM with lots of docker stuff is garden etc.

'fuck' and the family of 'fucking'

Depends on how many hostnames I need. If I just need 2, using opposite duals is fun, {romeo,ruliet}.shakespeare.com. 4 I almost always use cardinal directions or the seasons; {north,south,east,west}.domain.com or {spring,summer,fall,winter}.domain.com.

If I need a lot of potential subdomains, you can't beat the Greek or NATO alphabet, giving you 24 and 26 hostnames respectively which can be further enhanced by using the purpose of the server with the alphabet;

beta-w02.domain.com # second webserver on beta
beta-db02.domain.com # second db on beta

Current homelab+desktop+laptop host count here is 22. All anime characters or references. It’s a fairly large pool to pull from, so it’s worked for me for 20+ years now. Mobile devices (phones, tablets, etc) and game consoles aren’t really as clever though.

All of them are in a piHole DNS though so no host files keeps it easy to track. Services have names that mostly are just what they are though and cnames to the matching host that hosts them (or load balancer, whatever)

My media server is called "The_Nexus."

My phone when I host anything on it is "The Hackinator 9000" because I think it would be funny for a normie to see and freak out.

Internal server (Home Assistant etc.): domus
External server (Nextcloud etc.): nimbus
Router/firewall: murus

@Krik For my personal devices, i use the names of the 12 Colonies of Kobol from Battlestar Galactica. So I currently have 2 laptops: Aerilon and Caprica. When I get a new phone, I'll probably name it Scorpia or Tauron.

Choosing a good naming scheme depends on how many you need, and how often you add to your collection.

If you need some inspiration, check out this list. https://namingschemes.com/Main/_Page

Reserved for future use: krex & krox

Poor "kryx".

My first computer job was at a college that used names from ancient history and mythology. So I mostly still do that. Medea is my plex server. Zeus and Hera are the hosts for docker and VMs. Heimdall is the router.

The only break in the pattern is my storage, which is currently NASC and NASD...

Oh and my personal machine used to be HAL_9000 (complete with wallpaper and theme sounds) but now I just name it "box."

I usually use pokémon, typically from the first few generations.

I use characters from Haikyu and Thor.

I have asahi, hinata, daichi and heimdal running.

My personal use devices are all some variation of Pingu (eg. iPingu, Pingtendo etc.), and my NAS devices are based off Pokémon puns (Storlax and Archivysaur currently).

My wife on the other hand is boring, so her’s are just system default.

I use "butler" terms, like:

Jarvis
Archibald - used for my old Arch desktop
Alfred

They serve me well, and I give them due respect.

im very lazy now but i used to use tyrande, shandris, and then rotate around any other kalimidor/kaldorei places and people because when i played warcraft i was obsessed with night elves

I named mine after different Half Life characters: GMAN- Server FREEMAN- Main Gaming Rig ALYX- Laptop

And so on...

I use names of bones for my different serves. I have metacarpus, clavicle, femur and coccyx.

Ha! Clever and humerus!
- I guess with planets it always comes down to that funny one at some point

All of my infrastructure is named after terminator.

Like after specific Terminator models, or characters or...?

Lol just had a funny thought:

"What's the server's name?"

"Max"

T800@localhost: ping Wolfie PING Wolfie (192.168.1.10): 65 bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.123 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.110 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.115 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.118 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.121 ms --- Wolfie ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max = 0.110/0.117/0.123 ms

"Your server is pwned..."
- Yeah, my WiFi is called Skynet. My main nas s skynet vault. I have main vm called T800

Rlyeh -host/nas
Cthulhu
Yog
Yibb
Hastur
Hotep
Cylitha

I recently de-embarrassed my hostnames. I went with names that are one step removed from being dead obvious. Feels nice having descriptive, but not uncreative, names for everything

Custom built desktop pc: Studio
Home theater PC: Theater
Server: Gamut (this was Nexus until I ran into bs regarding the TLD preload list in web browsers... had to go with a non-tld name)
Everything else: Based off the model. For example, my Asus Vivobook S 15 is just "Vivobook", etc

Used to be astronomy based. Sol for actual network and then planets and stellar bodies and stuff. But I have so many devices now.

Now I just make it ass informative with as free letters as possible. Almost everything is 3 or 4 letters long.

So like fsrv for file server, msvr for media server and so on.

Solar System objects for my local network and names of extra solar objects for my offside servers. With all the moons and named trans neptunian objects in the solar system I so far had no issues finding a hostname candidate.

My devices are named after planets from Doctor Who: mondas, telos, skaro, villengard.

I use characters from whichever book I'm reading at the time. Examples:

Arya: From ASOIAF, a small but powerful Ultrabook
Cthulhu: From HP Lovecraft, a huge 17" laptop
Horus: From the Horus Heresy books, A powerful laptop
Binky: Death's white horse from discworld, a white desktop
Peaches: A rat that always carries a book with her. My home server

I don't have a whole network setup like the rest of you guys, but I've been naming my desktop pc's SHODAN ever since I built my first one. Secondary/partner's pc is named XERXES. I'll probably never change them.

localhost

Why: for privacy/anonymity concerns

Hmm, what does localhost.local do if you use mdns?

Also, your router must be a bit confusing:

localhost - 192.168.1.2

localhost - 192.168.1.3

...
- Fixes IP for me, but I admit I don't have a lot of services to access to like OP does

Asterix & Obelix themed.

Asterix is a rpi4, strong and small with ssd running dockers with homeassistant, revproxy and webserver, and camera storage.
Idefix is a rpi3, mainly test only nowadays.
Obelix is my desktop running voidlinux.

I used to have Pneumatix which is the mailman as the mail server and Panoramix, the druid, as domoticz server, Heroix, chief, as firewall and Bellefleur, beauty, as webserver 😉 All were LXD virtual servers on a pentium 3. I try to find a character matching the functionality. Except for domoticz all are now dockers on Asterix, so less use of funny names.

Non linux machines would be roman names from Asterix & Obelix, but I have none ..

At work we used famous dogs. Laika, Pluto, Cerberus etc

cooking-phasers

baconaxe

foot-therapy

Are my current guys.

I wouldn't say my hostnames are very creative, but they all have some kind of backstory.

Main desktop: POwOful
It's a pretty powerful desktop, so why not call it that :)

Laptop: LenOwO
Can you guess the laptop brand?

Server 1: Shitbox
It's my first server box I ever built, so it's underpowered and pretty shitty.

Server 2: Stowage
My proper server with actual data parity, and it's pretty powerful

Server 3: Jank
This one is another shitmix of hardware with random harddrives in raid 0. I am aware that they'll die at some point, and all of that data stored on it will be lost, so i use it as temporary storage whenever I need to copy something from one machine to another.

Robot vacuum: suckywucky
Yea....

LenOwO

LenUwU

pretty new setup but so far I've got

symmetra - synology dsm (nas)
junkrat - intel nuc main server

need to name my desktop/laptop now and maybe networking gear. thinking ramattra for the router and zenyatta for the bridge

weeb ones

Every computer I own is an autobot. My primary machine is always Optimus Prime, has been since 2008. Other machines get other names generally slightly inspired by their role / nature. Bumblebee and CliffJumper are miniPCs of various persuasions, Preceptor is my "mess around with AI" box, my big server that handles most of my data and network services is Wheeljack, my Macbook is Mirage, my backup server is Powerglide, my TV (which is an old Dell all in One running Linux Mint) is UltraMagnus.

Naming my devices after stars. Specifically stars in Ursa-Major

Desktop: alioth Laptop: alkaid Smartphone: alcor SteamDeck: dubhe Server: sarir

For my ProxMox server stuff I went with Lord of the Rings. The idea being the servers would be locations and the VMs would characters.

So right now my main server is Rivendell, and my PiHole on it is Gandalf ("You shall not pass!" Heehee eventually he'll have OPNSense too...)

If I get HomeAssistant at some point, obviously that'll be Samwise!

My Klipper VM for 3D printing is Celebrimbor, and the individual printers are named after various deities or myth figures of crafting/smithing/creativity like Brigid and Eitri.

For my client devices, I name my personal hardware after BattleTech mechs and that works well. It's intuitive because I can line up various roles and weight classes.

So my main desktop is Timberwolf, and my laptops are named after light mechs like Kitfox or Mistlynx.

Phones and tablets I don't really care about, they usually just name themselves after their model anyway. :)

I Used Gondolin for my PC but after reinstalling I didn't put it back on and left the default

Used to be names from Neuromancer like "ono-sendai" and variations of that.

Now laptop is "flat", server is named after it's purpose like log, mail, mon, hosting, storage, etc.

I have pebble, pabble, pibble, rebble, rabble, ribble and nibble.

Though the primary server is old enough that it was from a time when I named everything after Transformers, so it's Shockwave.

I named my old white bitfenix prodigy m "Baymax" because it was white and had rounded edges.

I use lore from Starcitizen (planet name, space station, satellite, etc.)

References to The Dark Tower or Murakami characters.

Rock types and Greek gods. Everything from emerald to Aphrodite.

I used the names of the eldrazi from magic the gathering:

Ulamog: desktop PC Emrakul: NAS / Plex server name Kozilek: NUC mini PC

Norbert, Norbina, Morbert, Morbina, Hassio, Nassio

My little pony. My pihole is pinkypie, mediaserver trottingham, homeassistant is ponyville, and my backup server is canterlot. And so on... :)

No.

What host names do you use?

Now let your pants down and tell me all about

your embarrassing host names!