What is your machine naming scheme?

Every machine is named after what it does (although I do 1337-ify the names, because I'm still a late 90s IRC teen at heart). If you've ever been onboarded into a sysadmin role where all the machines are named with whatever whimsical naming scheme each department chose, you'll fast develop a visceral hatred for non-descriptive naming schemes. The fifth time you get a ticket saying something like 'Hedwig is down' and you have to go crawling through three layers of linked files on SharePoint to find what and where 'Hedwig' is, you'll be ready to beat the person who named it to death, and that attitude tends to persist to your home naming scheme :p

Depending on the size of the machine I'll call it big/large/huge/small/Lil then a human name like John. BigJohn is my main server and hopefully one day he can get an upgrade and become large John.

Discworld characters. My storage servers name is Luggage, my phone is 'Ig', the vacuum is named after a monk.

Porn stars that the machines remind me of.

Stop judging me.

Ungulates. Because who doesn't like a hoofed animal?

My client machines are even-toed ungulates (order Artiodactyla) and my servers/IoT machines are odd-toed (order Perissodactyla). I'm typing this on Gazelle. My router is called Quagga, both after the extinct zebra subspecies and the routing protocol software (I don't use it any more but hey, it's a router).

Biological taxonomy is a great source of a huge number of systematic (and colloquial) names.

node-0 node-1 node-2 ...

Everything runs kubernetes so the names are mostly irrelevant.

Years ago I worked at a company who named everything after WoW characters. I wished murder was legal in those days.

All computers are named after dogs. My dogs, dogs in the family etc. the dog name should be carefully match to the computer’s role and characteristics.

My peerlessly reliably golden retriever will almost always have a server named after him. The most powerful computer in the house is named after the monstrously large golden my parents had when I was young. My sons gaming pc is fast but perpetually broken, named after our greyhound. Laptops are named for smaller dogs, SBC devices get named after toy size dogs.

Wi-Fi ssids should always be named after cats.

This is the natural way of things.

Anime girls. I want to change but I’m too far gone to have a random name

Rei - main pc

Asuna - main server

Milim - plex

Aqua - laptop

Darkness - first plex (the drives failed and lost everything rip)

Rem - raspi (pihole)

Ram - second raspi (home assistant)

Derek Derek1 DerekNew Derek2 NewDerek Ted DerekNew2 DerekTheServer Derek-Derek DerekMini

Highest mountains on Earth. Maybe not the best idea, since it took me a while to memorize Kangchenjunga.

Physical machines get stars names: Vega, Arcturus, Polaris, Fomalhaut, Deneb, Antares, Procyon, Algol, Aldebaran... and so on.

Virtual machines naming scheme is more reasonable: [os]-[role][number if needed]. Examples:

• alp-proxy
• talos-controlplane-3, talos-worker-1, talos-worker-6
• deb-storage

I'm incredibly boring. I name them with the company/model name. And what role they have appended.

I use names of mice from popular movies and TV shows. I use this list.

I know it's not useful, but it's fun to me. I would never use it in a professional environment.

A friend of mine names all his hosts afer famous battleships, his dad names every host after Star Trek ships and their wireless networks are all named after LOTR locations.

As for me, each hostname consists of the device type and the location of the host, no matter if it's local or a vps in a datacenter somewhere.

do birds fly? do ducks duck?

Personally I use corporate-like naming scheme for my devices, the format is:

[AABB-CCCC-DDEE]

AA: Location of the device - HQ (home), CL (cloud).
BB: Role of the device - HV (hypervisor), SV (server), NW (network) and workstation (WS).
CCCC: Device brand (for NW), application running (for SV), and workstation purpose (for WS).
DD: For server and workstation - OS running on the device (WN=Windows, LX=Linux, MA=macOS). For network device - their role on network (RT=router, AP=access point, SW=switch).
EE: # of the device, year of purchase for WS.

For example, here's my router, KASM server and my gaming PC hostnames:

HQNW-UBNT-RT01
HQSV-KASM-LX01
HQWS-GAME-WN16

Still trying to optimize this naming scheme, like removing all the dash, but currently too lazy to do it lol.

Servers (physical or virtual) get named based on usage: host-lab-01, vpn-guest-name, nas-01, proxmox-01, etc.

My wife's laptops get named [her name]-[model].

My machines (physical or virtual) get named after fairies from Pixie Hollow.

Writing this out makes me think I did my wife's machines dirty, though. Should have named them after fairies as well.

I usually go with characters from the Discworld series. So far I’ve had a Rincewind, Ridcully, Twoflower, Weatherwax, Ponder, Librarian, Luggage, and Hex, plus a router called “The Clacks”. Really ought to get Vimes and crew into the mix, now that I think of it… maybe the next one will be Angua or Carrot.

@aquova

Call me boring but

First 3 = OS/appliance type
Next 3 = Purpose/role
Last Character = Environment / lane
(numbers added if more than one)

Having a server called "Enterprise" is cool ... but when I get an email saying WINNASP or RHLFTPQ are down, it's much more useful and descriptive.

Desktops and PCs are just OS name and version. Proxmox cluster is Ankh-Morpork (from Disc world) and nodes are Ankh Morpork street names: Treacle Mine, Pseudopolis Yard, Attic Bee, etc.

At work I name them after Greeks gods, at home after Alps peaks.

Gravity falls characters: Mabel, Dipper, Soos, Wendy, etc...

Kittybox: old laptop that my cats like sitting on

Thinbox: new laptop that is thiner then kittybox.

Tallbox: desktop

Tinybox: BeagleBone black single board computer acting as server

Hell-related, mixed from Greek mythology and Christian mythology.

• Hades: THE main server. I mean it knows and controls everything
• Charon: the router. Self-explanatory
• Hell: my laptop. Its brand is Dell. It's where all this started.
• Limbo: my other laptop

I use significant hardware component or model:

• Z390
• AERO15

...or sometimes intended purpose:

• USERV - Ubuntu SERVer
• PlexBox - Plex Server
• NAS - NAS
• Runner - GitLab Runner
• MDEV - Mobile DEVelopment
• MDEV2 - Mobile DEVelopment, Version 2

I also have a Kubernetes cluster that ranges from K8S_0 to K8S_5.

Fruit trees. There's a ton of them.

I don't remember where I started, but for a long time it was Firefly characters. I had to dig deep enough to name a system YoSaffBridge.

Then I switched to gemstones from Steven Universe. Which I still use for mostly for "end user devices", i.e. desktops, mobile, cars (mine is peridot).

The functional stuff and the VMs I name by function. Router is router, switches are sw-0#, pihole-0#, minecraft, plex, ipam (yes I have an ipam for my network), etc...

It's simpler and I like to be able just ssh/browse to "function" than trying to remember that ipam is on bismuth.

Years of working for a company that did lots of acquisitions, where I had to deal with integrating whimsically named infrastructure, gave me a strong appreciation for a functional and consistent naming scheme.

Shakespeare.

Hamlet, Puck, Beatrice, Portia, Horatio, Antony, etc. My wife's devices have always been females.

I use trees and other types of shrubbery. Towers and laptops are named after trees while Pis and the like are named after bushes and ferns.

All of my machine names are related to Elvis Presley. Elvis has been my desktop PC for years, and I have or have had Priscilla, Lisa-Marie, ColonelParker, Blue-Hawaii, Hound Dog, Memphis, Tupelo, and Graceland. I want to rethink this a bit to have to flow better, maybe have Graceland as my network name, or maybe the router. Also thinking about changing to something space-related or Norse Mythology as the theme.

DHARMA stations (from the show LOST)

Arrow, Swan, Flame, and Pearl so far :)

Edit: also funny to see there's 108 comments as of now

My old company used Greek and Roman gods and heroes. Hermes01 was the mail server, for example (because Hermes was the messenger of the gods). I don't remember all of them, but we had demeter (esx clusters), zeus (file servers iirc), Ares (backup servers), and other server names like that.

I used to name my cloud VMs after Monogatari characters but now I just settle with xxn.domain.tld so it's easy to remember when I need to SSH into one.

• xx = shortcode for which service the VM is from (for example Azure = az, DigitalOcean = do)

• n = VM number from 1-9

do2.domain.tld

I just name them based on the case labels, model name, and/or server function. My main host server is "DellPVE", gaming computer is "Phanteks", Plex server named "Plex", octoprint is named "Octoprint" etc..

I only use robot names

Bender B. Rodriguez

Roberto

R. Daneel Olivaw

C3PO

Robotina

I do Japanese city names and the drives in the machines are named after railway/subway stations in said city.

Mine are all based on Norse Myths. My various servers are named for the nine realms, and the personal devices are named after Gods/Heroes/Creatures.

For example my main Desktop rig is named "Midgard" and my phone is "Odin".

Battlestar Galactica years ago. Dradis for the domain name and ships for the computers.

Galactica.dradis Pegasus.dradis Basestar.dradis And so on. Made it fun.

Try monopoly board street names like oxford road or parklane. Or maybe flower names like daisy or pertunia.

I go with characters from Super Mario, eg Luigi, Bowser, Yoshi. I like them because they’re short, easy to type and memorable.

In case people don’t know, https://namingschemes.com/Main_Page can be a good source of inspiration.

One of my nicknames is Hugo. I have a Windows, a macOS, a Debian and a Raspbian machine.

So I call them Hugowin, Hugotosh and Hugopi. The Debian machine mostly runs Plex so it is named Plexy. And my Phone is called iBobes because someone once told me that Bobes mean ass in german and i though that is incredibly funny.

I use Quake 3 characters names: doom, crash, sorlag, razor, bitterman, xaero, ...

I name them after the cpu inside.

But i only have 3 pcs. No pi's or other things, so its a bit simpler... for now.

Whatever I'm feeling at that moment My server is "bigdellthing" because it's a Dell r620 My laptop is "lily-legion-5-pro" because I was feeling unoriginal My other laptop is "hunterbidenslaptop" because there were some dumbasses talking about the damn hunter biden laptop conspiracy theory by me

I have found my kin here I see.

Greek god names, Mission code names, uncommon colors, famous mountains, depending on the type of devices. I must have a hundred different ones by now.

All my devices get named after cities. I try to make it somewhat relevant to the purpose of the machine.
Usually things related to the device (e.g. network shares) get named after neighbourhoods in the respective cities.

• Main PC: SAN-FRANCISCO,

• File server: SARAJEVO,

  • Shares: VRATNIK, BISTRIK, SEDRENIK, HRASTOVI,

• Work laptop: SEATTLE,

• Phone: BARCELONA,

• Media box: CANNES.

My boyfriend names all of his devices after planetary bodies, much like OP.
Thing related to the devices are named after the moons of the respective planet.

• Main PC: SATURN,
  • Drives: ATLAS, PROMETHEUS, TITAN, HYPERION, JANUS,
• File server: JUPITER,
  • Shares: GANYMEDE,
• Phone: PLUTO,
• Laptop: CHARON.

(He just realised that last one is inconsistent, and is renaming it to MERCURY)

I name them based on what they do. Makes it easy for me to guess the name of a server if I don't have it memorized.

I always come up with a naming scheme and then immediately forget it either because I'm in a rush setting up a computer and forget to name the machine or because I get tired of trying to keep track of which machine is what.

I asked chatgpt a while ago and it told me this scheme.

A random word starting with V for a virtual machine (and gave me a list of ten words)

Start with L for laptops, add letters for other distinction

Funny, the latest three VMs i setup after that chat had a name starting with V 😂

Shrek - OPNSense, because it (firewall) guards my swamp.

Dragon - NAS, because of a dragons hoard.

Donkey - Proxmox, I use this for a few VMs and docker containers. It stores my DNS, donkey was annoying, and there is nothing more annoying than your DNS going down.

Fiona - Backup NAS - less big, only stores important backups.

Because I’m a huge dork, all my machines are named after the FFXIV jobs:

Desktop-Red Mage Laptop-Machinist RaspberryPi-Sage etc.

I use planets from dune:

• Caladan: Plex, podgrab
• Arrakis: Nextcloud
• Corrin: Baby buddy
• Lampadas: Deluge
• GeidiPrime: Gitea
• Kaitain: Reverse proxy

I use different types, cultivars, or alternative names for potatoes. Device names over the years have included: russet, yukon gold, ranger, marispiper, vivaldi, ratte, snowden, spud, and tater.

Names of robots or AIs, mostly.

Some names used in my household:

• Ralf (the computer of the main character in Whiz Kids)
• GLaDOS
• Wheatley (the stupid core in Portal 2)
• Lal (Data's daughter)

Names from various Final Fantasy titles. Playable character names for workstations. Names of summons for servers. Names of cities and locations for networking devices. Names of Moogles for some services that I wanted to give a unique name.

I generally like to take a whole "universe" for naming schemes. Star Trek is another favoured one, since you get a variety of names in different categories. Characters, Ships, Places, etc.

I have no naming consistency, whatever I feel like that day is what it's name ends up with.

Server01, server02, server03...am I doing this wrong?

Laptops/desktopes: no real naming scheme, they use non-static DHCP leases anyway.

Physical servers: NATO phonetic alphabet. If I run out of letters something has gone terribly wrong right.

VMs: I don;t have many of these left, but they are named according to their function and then a digit in case I need more. e.g. docker1, k3s1. This does mean that I have some potential oddities like a k3s cluster with foxtrot, alpha, and k3s1 as members, but IMO that's fine and lets me easily tell if something is physical or virtual. I am considering including the physical machine name in the VM name for new things as I no longer have things set up such that machines can migrate... though I haven't made a new VM in some time.

Network equipment: Named according to location and function. e,g, rack-router, rack-10g, rack-back-1g, rack-ap, upstairs-10g, upstairs-ap. If something moves or is repurposed it is likely getting reconfigured so renaming at that point makes sense.

I kept the naming scheme I used when I was doing independent tech support: snack bars. People got a chuckle when they heard "Kit Kat was misbehaving". So I kept it for my servers, Kit Kat, Toaster & Strudel, and Snickers

For work, two letters for the type of machine, two numbers for the location, three letters for the department, and two numbers for the device.

LT01MKT27 = laptop at HQ, in marketing, 27 is the unique ID
SV05EXC03 = server at remote office #5, running exchange, 03 is the unique ID

At home, goofy on-the-fly names!

I use names of random yokai. There are so many that I'll never run out. I used to use names of fictional AIs that I would hand pick, but after a bunch of VMs, that became too annoying to deal with.

All my homelab stuff is boring. Host machine names are just 'model ' + '-' + 'increment'. VMs and containers are either service or service + increment.

Whimsical names and themes are fun, but don't scale and I need the mental bandwidth for other things than mapping service to machine etc.

Science fiction spacecraft - Enterprise, Nostromo, Tardis, Falcon, etc.

Words from the jabberwocky:

• Tumtum tree (plex)
• Vorpal (Linux laptop)
• Bandersnatch (MBP)
• Jubjub (gaming PC)

The names of people I know, but changed a bit to sound more cartoonish.

I usually name mine after songs that I happen to be listening to at the moment.

Recently, I just use whatever comes first to my mind. The last few machines have been egg-related.

At some previous employers, we used fish and salmon (king, sockeye, coho, etc).

My brother and I started off a tradition when we named our first family desktop computer 'Kraid' from Super Metroid. Since then every device has been named after an equivalent mob. My personal gaming computer was named 'Phantoon', our 3 phones were named 'Eticoon 1/2/3', our first tablet was Tatori, etc.

Was fun and our dad got behind it very quick as a Super Metroid fan himself.

I use Grecian gods, based as much as possible after what they do. Towards the end it kinda breaks down.

Kronos - Primary Proxmox
Hera - Ubuntu Server VM
Charon - Pihole VM
Hades - Secondary Proxmox
Ares - Gaming Desktop
Hestia - Home assistant
Artemis - Laptop
Hermes - Roomba
Orpheus - Torrent box
Hermes - Pixel 6 Pro

Transformers 😁

I used to invent "funny" names, but at some point it became a chore and I also found I'm forgetting some names or spelling when I need it.

Call me boring, but doing enterprise system admin jobs for years I recently started to adopt functional naming convention.

This is what I have now: [location code][OS code][type vm/ct][environment code][workload][index]

So the first production DB linux VM in my primary Los Angeles location will be named LA1LVMPDB1 And my second test Nextcloud container hosted in the same location will be named LA2LCTTNC2.

I still have to invent short names for workload, which is harder for specialized containers, but overall this makes it all more manageable.

I pick a random adjective + noun. Eg. Reluctant otter

I name mine after different places or ships from anime shows I watch. My laptop is Bebop from Cowboy Bebop, my desktop is goingmerry from One Piece, my Kali VM is senku1 from Dr. Stone, and my NAS server is amaterasu from Fire Force.

Games from my childhood. Moon Patrol, Galaga, Zaxxon, Twin Bee, Xevious, Gradius, etc.

Yup. I'm that old.

Woman names in my electro swing playlist...

I just love the vintage vibes they have

Since its just me, I use Metroid locations and characters based on what the server does.

I use a naming convention for my homelab stuff that is descriptive enough for future reference in case I don't touch the machine in a while.

<organization or domain><server type><sequence>

so for example if you have a local domain you use for internal work and the name is Leet Hax my naming would look something like this

leethax_prd01, leethax_prd02, leethax_proxmox01, leethax_nextcloud01, leethax_plex01

you get the idea, in my network I don't add the underscore but I figured for explanation sakes I would here. I'm sure without explaining what each server is, whether it's a VM from proxmox or an actual machine, you know what they are when they show up on your router. I added the sequence numbering for future proofing my self hosted setup in case I get another machine in the future.

I name my personal devices after Nasa projects and launches and my wife, well her phone is just called iPhone 1, 2, 3 etc. so everything is easy to spot on my home network.

I tend to name mine after their physical appearance, though I'm leaning towards space-related names now.

I'll copy a Discord message I sent someone while explaining my naming scheme:

in chronological order: my very old laptop was black and grey so it was Batman my first build had orange/gold fans so it was Aurum my next build was black and white so it was Mono my current build had lots of RGB so it was Nova (like supernova) my home server has the BitFenix wings logo so it was Flight my laptop is sleek and pretty speedy so it was Comet

Characters from the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Zaphod, Prosser, Arthur, slartibartfast etc

VPS/servers after particles. Quark, Boson, Hadron etc

My unraid server is called Mothership. Everything else is called what it is because I'll get confused if they had cute names

I name all my computers after NZ Birds in our native language Māori. So far I have used, Pukeko, Takahe, Kakapo, Weka, Ruru, Piwakawaka and my latest laptop Kahu

I had painted an old Lenovo desktop blue to use as a home server. Named it blueberry. Recently upgraded servers using a black case. Named it blackberry.

@home: In the Seventies and Eighties, I didn't bother naming them. In the nineties it was either dead dog names (because I missed the dogs) or the colour of the box (blue and purple). Then in the 00-ies I used a short but explanatory descriptions like SRVBKP1, PCOS2, LTDebby (for laptop Debian). Today all Raspberry Pi's and personal VPS's are named after (dead) ancestors (and the mount points on them are named after things they liked).

I do Reboot characters, since I'm old! Kind of running low now but I call each of my phones Glitch and it makes me very happy.

Ship names from the expanse.

My PC is the Rocinante My home server was previously the Behemoth, put it in a smaller case so now it’s Medina.

Domestic no Kanojo is an anime that people describe as rubbish. Maybe it is, depending on where you're coming from, but I was invested in it, and so decided to honour the anime/manga by naming my servers "Hina Tachibana", "Natsuo Fujii", "Rui Tachibana" and "Miu Ashihara".

On my labs cluster they are named after famous physicists

You gotta have the concepts the machines are named after change as the nature of the machine changes (and bonus points if the nature of the concept is analogous to the nature of the machine). E.g. if my main machines were planets, then when I added servers they would be named after space hardware (hubble, webb, iss, etc). Raspberry Pis can be ceres, eros, vesta, juno, etc. It actually genuinely helps by distributing around within your brain the placement of which machine corresponds to which concept or which name, and also it frees up more names when you start having tons of machines in different categories.

I've had tons of naming schemes over the years (chemical elements and classic video games were two that I used for different banks of machines) and I've done that system with good results.

I don't have a very consistent naming theme. I've used various names related to music, science, and art. I have a decomissioned machine named "numbers" for example.

However, I would like to point out we have plenty more than 8 celestial bodies of interest in the solar system if you include Eris, Ceres, Pluto, Makemake, the moons of Jupiter, and more. It might not be indefinitely extendable, but may help in the short term.

cakes then a different type of cake. ie cakesFlan

My main machine is Suckup (Second Universal Cybernetic-Kinetic Ultra-Micro Programmer), my laptop is Tuckup (Third Universal etc), my phone is Keitaichan (keitai being Japanese for mobile phone), my tablet is Tabbuchan (from Japanese taburetto for tablet), my NAS is Shinochan (from shinorojii, Japanese for Synology), because I am absolutely insufferable and unimaginative and I crack myself up.

I give them weird syntax names so if someone was to hack in the names wouldn't give away what they are immediately. I don't reuse numbers so that if I rebuild something it gets a new num.

Location-Ordinal-NetworkNum-Counter Eg AU-01-01-01

Containers are just their application name except where I have more than 1 then its Application01,02,etc.

Star types, stellar objects, planet names, etc...

I use Roman authors, with the machine/VM's purpose (often vaguely) linked to what the author was known for. For example, my NAS is called Tacitus (a historian), while my game server is called Plautus (a playwright). A couple services predate my schema (like my Pihole and OPNSense box) and are named descriptively.

I've been doing birds. So far I just have Cardinal, Bluebird, and Sparrow

Just stupid puns that come to mind when I set it up. Synology NAS is "Rainy" since the box had "be your own cloud" written on it. M1 MacBook is "Apple Pie" because being ARM it's just a big Raspberry Pi right? Etc

Started with Evangelion Magi naming and now I just use the pet name generator in Terraform.

Random_pet

I name devices after Greek Gods / Goddesses. My main server is called Olympus.

Russian spacecraft and rockets.

Currently I have N1 as my home server and my desktop is Energia. I've previously had Proton and Soyuz etc.

Lowercaps Dwarfplanets. chaos, orcus, ixion, ceres, haumea, makemake, etc. DHCP/router is named sol

US states. If I have more than 50 different host names to manage, I should re-evaluate my hobbies. And then lazily move on to US state capitals.

WoW places. Since some of my servers died, I'm currently only sitting on dark portal (Firewall), and the Stranglethorn Valley server with Gurubashi Arena (Plex), Booty Bay (you can imagine) and wild shore (shared file system VM)

Bird species, most of the time. I look for a bird that seems to have some connection with the intended purpose of the box, then use that. e.g. my work computer's hostname is cormorant.

I use the names of chemical elements, but with two twists: I assign them in the order in which they appear in the song "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer, and I use the German names. So I have (or had), among others, Wasserstoff, Sauerstoff, Stickstoff, etc ...

I used to work in the GRASP lab at Penn, and my predecessor there was John Bradley of xv fame. He had started naming all the machines after fish.

When I got there I continued the practice, naming some tiny computers being used for mini robots after different types of goldfish.

In my current job, years ago, I managed a group of Linux servers, and I named them after Demons (Lucifer, Asmodeus, Azrael, Beelzebub, etc.).

At this point, there is a specific naming convention in use where I'm at, and the name is limited to identifying organization, application, and server type.

I have a weird one: years ago I called one machine "nudl" (like using one's noodle but with a weird spelling). Now I've got a few different nudls, a strudl, a dudl, and I think there's a pudl in the closet somewhere.

At my first job/internship it was fish names (they were dev/qa servers so wiped almost daily): Crappie, Bluegill, Walleye, Marlin, etc.

Current job is medical so it's all professional (i.e gr01sec02, gr02sccm01)

At home I've got a couple of naming schemes for different device types.:

Phones: i-telleuwat(last 4 of the number)
PCs and Media centers: playon(last octet of the IP)
Servers:gimme(service thats hosted)

Names of Greek letters.

Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon...

I've never thought about this, but now that you bring it to my attention I think I'd go with a combination of mineral-flower, so for example "tourmaline-calendula".
Also to automate that, I saw that there is this neat website perchance.org that you can use to construct random word generators, I'm wondering if there's an open source alternative though, that would be great

I’ve used Star Trek names before, but in general I’ve just started naming them what they’re used for (ex. Dev-Mint, StorageCore)

My Raspberry Pi's are named after planets and large bodies on the Solar system.

My servers are named after The Expanse characters and ships.

VM's and CT's after their usage with a tag in Proxmox for the OS used.

Scientists/inventors for me - bonus points if I can find one related to the machine's purpose (Kodi machine named after a contributor to the TV for example)

Star Trek ships at home. And Game of Thrones characters at work.

I recently switched to using the periodic table. I made myself a nice little spreadsheet to keep track of it all. I used to name hosts after random stuff like cereal, snacks, or just plain old [my first name]-desktop.

Fun fact: When AOL was still operating in Germany, internal servers in their network were named after characters / things from Asterix comics, like Asterix, Obelix, Idefix, Miraculix and even Hinkelstein (menhir). When Telecom Italia bought them up they unfortunately got rid of all these and replaced them with standard corpo server names. Source: I worked there.

Pretty much same as you: If it works for NASA or it's a heavenly body, it works for me. Main PC is called SATURN V (SATURN for most things). Laptop is called HYPERION. Currently saving up to replace SATURN with ARTEMIS. Might throw in a GAIA NAS/virtualization server at some point, if cash flow allows for it. I'm not as picky about my family's devices that I've set up, though... They'll keep their randomly generated names, mostly out of laziness.

All of my servers are named after characters from the Dragon Ball universe.

Don't recommend doing an 'obscured' naming scheme,, hate having to refer to a spreadsheet to know what server does what because I tend to spin up a lot of random stuff. Highly recommend using functional names that are easy for your brain to remember, like an acronym for whatever service or types of services it's running.

"People" names that are alliterative with the actual machine type. E.g. PeterPi, WillWhitebox, NancyNAS, LarryLePotato

Also some kind of Machinery. "GameMachine" for my Xbox "BigMachine" for my PC "MiniMachine" for my Phone "MicroMachine" for my Pi

Except my small 2-in-1 Laptop. That's "decepticon". Because it's an Asus Transformer Book.

@aquova @selfhosted

My personal domain name is AZK.Ware (azkware.net) so it follows that my machines are called azkware-desktop, azkware-server and azkware-laptop

looks like I'm one of the many that use Star Trek ships for my naming scheme:

Enterprise - My gaming PC
Kumari (Gen. Shran's ship) - my debian laptop
Defiant - another debian laptop (a two-in-one ultraportable)

I name mine after fictional planets.

Royal-Cat-(Computer type)

for example, Royal-Cat-PC or Royal-Cat-iPhone

Mine machines are all named after Final Fantasy Summons/Espers/Eidolons/Aeons/Primals.

My main proxmox node is Bahamut. I try to pick a suitable summon that matches the host but that doesn't always work.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.

[Thread #2 for this sub, first seen 18th Jul 2023, 21:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Used to use characters from Madagascar, swapping over to dankpods references. Dingus, Frank, Sexy Speaker, Old Mate Senny.

Meta machines on my system offer data. Infra machines on my system run the network (infrastructure). But my favourite is naming all my HDD’s platters; Media Platters, Service Platters, etc.

2nd ww navy vessels (inspired by kancolle)

personal machines - destroyers
servers - battleships

I do models for laptops and case names for my built desktop. So Dell-3590 or my desktop is NR400.

I know who has what so its easy to manage if i want to cut off network access or transfer files.

Futurama characters: Farnsworth, Calculon, Nibbler, Wernstrom, Clamps

Solar system. My gaming machine is called Titan, my Pihole is called Asteriods, my Lemmy machine Callisto and on it goes. 😀

pi

pi3

pi3v2

space

fusion

magnet

qdivision

I used names of fictional robots, androids and self-aware computers (though I avoided HAL for obvious reasons) for a long time. These days my wife and I usually go with an indirect reference to the function or hardware - Ex. a device named Anathema, or a Raspberry Pi server named Marie (as in Marie Callendar, a former local pie/restaurant chain). I had an expendable frankenputer for tinkering that I called RedShirt.

Currently trying to come up with a name other than Chris for the PineTab 2.

Edit to add: Places I've worked have used Roman emperors, drink brands, Simpsons characters, and of course basics like "IIS1" "MAIL4" "QA-3" and so on. Some would add numbers to the names sequentially, others would use the last octet of the IP address.

I use harry potter characters

In college, they were all the secret identity for versions of the Flash. Since then, I've expanded to other comic book super heroes.

urmom = main pc

fbi = rpi 4 with docker + pihole + 2x unbound

I use futhark runes for my machines and set an ASCII representation of the rune symbol as the /etc/{issue,motd}

My server is named Yggdrasil and my devices are named after the 9 realms.

My NAS that holds all my data is Farnsworth. My file server is Hermes. My Linux VM that does all the scut-work is Kif. My beefy gaming PC is Bender. My beefy gaming laptop is Flexo. And so on.

My devices are all named after things from the Star Wars universe, in particular:

• Stationary computers are named after planets (my "main" PC is Coruscant, the old "main" that was Coruscant before is now Corellia, etc.)
• Laptops are named after mega-stations (DeathStarI, DeathStarII, Starkiller, etc.)
• Tablets and comparable sized devices are named after giant starships like the Super Star Destroyers (Executor, Lusankya, KnightHammer, etc.)
• Mobile phones are named after regular sized starships (like Tydirium, TantiveIV, SlaveI, EbonHawk, etc.)

I started with Die Hard characters (Hansgruber, NakatomiVault for Nas, John McClane, etc) but lately have been doing Back to the Future. I've got a Marty McFly, DocBrown (old server), and BiffTannen.

I've not played for years but I still have a YuGiOh cards naming scheme.

Not just for devices but also my hard drives, I use the names of stars. For example Rigel or Betelgeuse

I do robots from video games, movies, TV shows, etc.

I name my machines after my cats.

All of my personal machines are Autobots.

At work we use space probes (Voyager, Pioneer, New Horizons, etc). We're a small satellite communications company.

Greek gods.

Zeus, ares, hera, dionysus, etc etc

My Synology is named Atlas because it’s my main file storage box (and has a most of my services running on it).

My VPS is called Aurora after the atmospheric phenomenon because cloud server.

And my little laptop I installed a server Linux distro on is called Challenger because I find it challenging to work with Fedora Server sometimes

I've changed my naming scheme so many times that its practically a set-of-sets at this point. But, "board games" is a good long one if you have a lot of machines.

For work - No need to divulge. It's work/corporate standards likely similar to some folks that have listed here give or take some characters.

For home, Venture Brothers characters.

For personal machines, I use rivers.

At work we use superheroes.

For hobby projects, cute 4 letter words (it's a challenge), for example bubu and alia.

i use all the naming schemes. douglas adams, astronomy, greek letters, star trek ...

have to come up with a new concept every other machine.

Mine are named after mythical Asian creatures.

Phoenix, Kirin, Yuki-onna, Dragon, Kodama, etc etc

After starting with X-Men characters and quickly running out I moved to Star Wars planets as there are a lot more of them

*bble. Rabble Ribble Pebble Pibble Tribble Rebble Jibble Jabble Etc...

Sounds like you could start using the names of moons. But a pantheon does sound like a good system too, should also include the titans.

We did reindeer; Dasher, Dancer, Vixen, etc.

Usually just names/lyrics of my favorite songs
iPhone: ByeByeBaby
AirPods: You're on your own, kid
Laptop: InnerMonologue
Except just for fun, I named my HomePod Cortana

I tried thematic names but I kept adding devices until it all fell apart.

Now I'm using generic nouns like: plaza, highway, bazaar, stadium, minefield, church...

Various computers/robots from media.

My desktop is Eddie (The name of the shop's computer from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and my home server is HEX (the weird magic computer in the High Energy Magic building at Unseen University in the Discworld novels)

I use the names of females that have (had) significance in my life.