I don't think nnutter meant naming machines by their purpose like "mail.localdomain", "www.localdomain", etc. Rather, for example, I once named a QA build-testi

I don't think nnutter meant naming machines by their purpose like "mail.localdomain", "www.localdomain", etc. Rather, for example, I once named a QA build-testing machine "yaeger" after the test pilot that broke the sound barrier. Hostnames whose namesake has similar traits (even vaguely) to the machine's purpose can help you remember which machine performs what task on your network, or recall what a machine's purpose is by it's hostname. Careful selection of such names provides these benefits without causing any more problems when you move a service to another machine than using any other naming scheme.