Selfhosted

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

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

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

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 planets from dune:

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

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

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

@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 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 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.

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)

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.

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)

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.

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 😂

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 go with main character names from good anime. So Kusanagi, Vash, Lelouch, Kakashi, etc.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

Transformers 😁

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.

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

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

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

Woman names in my electro swing playlist...

I just love the vintage vibes they have

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

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 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

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

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".

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

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

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.

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