The right question to ask is how and when hostnames are serialized to disk and how you need to interact with them. The most common in my experience are for logg

The right question to ask is how and when hostnames are serialized to disk and how you need to interact with them. The most common in my experience are for logging, metrics, backups and monitoring. So those interactions are important use cases to consider. In my opinion a good hostname, given an enterprise setting and in order of importance, should reflect 1) if the host is production, a staging area, or someone's toy, and 2) which group or team has responsibility or it. If relevant, also 3) what type of server or role it is. Should you find some sort of data dump or log that contains a hostname, it should be immediately obvious how sensitive it can be and with whom to speak. This basic requirement mostly rules out "cute-only" names.