Selfhosted

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I am a simple person.

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

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

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.

I have been using Uranus moons for all my devices.

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).

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

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

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

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!

AI from fiction:

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

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

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

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 😄

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'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

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.

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.

I went with alpha, beta, gamma ...

Desktop: Octiron
Laptop: Octogen
Phone: Octarine

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

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).

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

I use some generic names.

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

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

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

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

I use characters from Haikyu and Thor.

I have asahi, hinata, daichi and heimdal running.

I do marvel weapons/artifacts:

Phone: Mjolnir

Tablet: Stormbreaker

Laptop: Darkhold

Earbuds: I.C.E.R

Backup NAS: EyeOfAgamotto

Etc, etc 😅

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