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Ask HN: How do you choose a hostname for personal devices?
I just built a new PC and I'm having trouble deciding on a hostname. I used to name them after the CPU inside, but my last PC got a CPU upgrade halfway through so the name didn't make sense anymore. So I guess I need a new system.
What are some naming systems you all use?
- rbanffy 2y agoI’ve been using sci-fi authors. My laptop is “lem”, the cluster is “Gibson” with machines numbered from zero. The Mac Mini is “harlan” after Harlan Ellison (didn’t want it to be confused with that Oracle guy). The Windows machine is named “Brian” after Brian Herbert, because he is a terrible writer. There’s also Douglas Adams, Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Charlie Stross, and many others.
- bhaney 2y agoI name my machines after Neutral Milk Hotel song titles and lyrics
- ofalkaed 2y agoI use old man names, old man names in this case being those names which where archaic when I was little and only very old men had them. No idea why, just started doing it 25 years ago and kept it up. But hostname for my main computer has always been yeoman, I assume it is because it does the yeoman's share but I really don't remember, might have just been a whim.
- fallingsquirrel 2y agoOut of all the comments, this one speaks to me the most. No idea why either :) but I think I have my new system. Thank you for posting this!
- talldayo 2y agousername+location
- echoangle 2y agoWhat exactly do you mean by username? Do you use only a single user on every device?
- signal_space 2y agoamino acids, alkanes, or elements
- codevark 2y ago[dead]
- solardev 2y agoI'm boring and usually just call them by their function. "Gaming desktop", "TV streamer", "work laptop", etc.
- kristjansson 2y agoDescriptive words translated into an uncommon language
- sillysaurusx 2y agoAnime names. I’m partial to vegeta and goku.
- dlisboa 2y agoI name mine after major rivers. Had a mekong, nile, danube. Sometimes it’s wordplay, my first Mac was Potomac.
- gavinhoward 2y agoYou beat me to it! And I have had machines with some of the same names.
- woadwarrior01 2y agoNorse mythology
- josefdlange 2y agoFor a long time I used names of (usually) the transitional metals on the periodic table. It started just as "Titanium" for a PowerBook G4 since that was its codename anyway, but went on from there. Then it transitioned to plants and trees: aster, begonia, willow, maple. I had a shift in life where I began to value the organic world more than dry, boring metals.
- choult 2y agoI settled on US presidents, in order, a while back. Currently on Fillmore.
- jmisavage 2y agoI’ve had pet rabbit nearly my entire life and tend to name my devices after things rabbits do or nicknames I’ve given them - hopper, sniffer, nibbler, loafy, etc… My college computer lab used element names. The ones hardest to spell had the least amount of people connected to them.
- d0ublespeak 2y agoFamous chemists, physicists and computer scientists. Turing, Bernoulli, Lovelace etc… with a rough association between the namesake and function. Prior to that was using Jupiter and its moons but ran out of named ones.
- tazjin 2y agoI name hosts after a place in the city I live in that is not where I live. Some hostnames from recent years are khamovnik, whitby, zamalek, sanduny. It's interesting because it makes me consider places that I don't go to every day, and then rate them for "hostnameability" and so on. Ends up with hostnames being quite memorable.
- InvaderFizz 2y agoOwnerType JakeBook = MBP JakePods = AirPods JanePad = iPad Short, easy to tell whose device is which in the house, uncreative.
- gavinhoward 2y agoRivers, all lowercase. My first Linux machine was `congo`. My oldest extent one is `volga`. And my beefiest (biggest) machine is `nile`. My local backup NAS is `danube`, and my offsite server is `yangtze`. If I were you, and didn't want boring job-themed names, choose a theme and use it. You could choose mountains, and your biggest machine could be `everest`, while your most sacred could be `olympus`. Or you could choose cities, Pokemon, anime characters, authors, fish, mammals, etc. Any category with a lot of items. Seas, for example, won't work because there aren't many.
- 3np 2y agoPokemon. Bonus: If you remember the numbers and do static assigment, now you have a scheme to map names to IP addresses in your head. An old Pokemon poster becomes an address lookup table. Any familiar theme with an ordering (periodic table?) should do the same!
- hbogert 2y ago1,025 Pokémon.. if only it was three less it would've fitted in a /22. Alas, /21 it is.
- resonious 2y agoI usually just use my name (or shortened username) + the laptop model. Like "resxps" if I had a Dell XPS, or "respad" if I had a Thinkpad.
- zzzbra 2y agoall of mine are named after songs by the Japanese noise band Boredoms. so far I have TV Scorpion, Mama Brain, Chocolate Synthesizer, Telehorse Uma, Pop Tatari, Seadrum, Super Going, and Domsbore
- OuterVale 2y agoI use 'hacker' terms. I've got Mainframe (my server), Phreak (my phone), Baud (my laptop), etc.
- mcdow 2y agoI do horses from various media. Epona, Trigger, Shadowfax.
- massysett 2y agoNames from Black history and the arts: frederick, joplin, randolph, etc
- qmarchi 2y agoDevices in my house are prefixed with the owner of the device (CRDNL- or CZZN-) then generally around the reason on why the device was built/upgraded. For example, I've got CRDNL-NIPPON for a machine that I was intending to take with me to Japan, and my partner's machine is CZZN-VTUBER for when she was getting into being... a VTuber.
- linux2647 2y agoHuman languages. There are more than 7000 and I highly doubt I’ll ever have more than a few hundred devices in my lifetime.
- hermanradtke 2y agoCelestial bodies. Saturn and Jupiter have a lot of moons.
- lgrebe 2y agoFrist name of the primary user + device name or [description + year of purchase] Tim’s iPhone 13 Jamie’s MacBook Air 15 Alternatively function (+ location or for espHome devices their Mac suffix) Sonos Kitchen Sprinkler-0f3812 hotwater-pump-09ac88
- simonw 2y agoThe name of the device and the year I bought it - "simon-macbookpro-2023" for example.
- singingfish 2y agoCharacters from the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy. Currently I have arthur, eddie, zarquon, trillian, alice, hotblack and marvin This lab I was in used to use Scottish mountains. Some of which were visible from the lab window, sometimes.
- taejavu 2y agoSince Apple Silicon debuted, I've been naming my machines after early computers. My M1 Macbook Air was named "Eniac" and my M3 Max Macbook Pro is named "Whirlwind". Also, not exactly the same but my phone is named "Memex", which I think is both cute and appropriate.
- m463 2y agoYou could do that, with fictional computers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_computers Of course "The Government Machine" or "The Mechanical Brain" have spaces in the name, which is kind of annoying unless you run macos. :)
- teddyh 2y agoRFC 1178 has you covered: <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1178.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1178.html>
- entropie 2y agoI use names from the ancient greeks. Homeserver: Nyx is the Greek goddess of the night. She is one of the primordial deities and is often depicted as a powerful and fearsome figure, respected even by Zeus. Workstation: The name "Xeno" comes from the Greek word "xenos," meaning "stranger" or "foreigner." While "xenos" itself is not a mythological figure, the concept of the stranger or the unknown plays an important role in many Greek myths and stories, often with dark or threatening connotations. Notebook: Ker: Keres (plural of Ker) are Greek death spirits. They are winged entities that represent violent or untimely death and are often depicted as fearsome and ominous. (I asked chatgpt for explainations of the names, because iam not a native english speaker.) I use the naming scheme like over a decade now. I like the name of my home net the most. Its enti.ty.
- asdz 2y agoomg same here, I used Greek Mythological creature list from wiki
- basscomm 2y agoI follow RFC 1178: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1178 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1178 The theme I use is Final Fantasy characters.
- c0wb0yc0d3r 2y agoPokemon for me.
- allenporter 2y agoThis is an answer https://mnx.io/blog/a-proper-server-naming-scheme/ https://mnx.io/blog/a-proper-server-naming-scheme/ for cattle not pets.
- ramses0 2y agohttp://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1178.html http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1178.html I'll share overlapping advice: don't name (conference rooms) after geographical locations or places, eg: "We're meeting in Colorado/Houston" ... too much opportunity for confusion. I spent a little time looking for the OG "hacker's dictionary" style advice for hostname naming, but it's tough to find now, and the RFC is more official and close enough. My fun little naming technique for my "fleet" of pi-zeros was "juan, deux, tree, faux, ..." Cattle not pets means you can pick "fun" names for your personal (pet) computers, eg, my first SSD Max Mini I called "rock", first laptop after that I called "slab". Something emotional or memorable is nice, or just keep flipping through word-pairs from diceware to find something suitable. https://diceware.dmuth.org/ https://diceware.dmuth.org/
- synicalx 2y agoMine are all named after ships from the Expanse, generally based on what they are or how I use them. My phone is the Rocinante, big beefy desktop is the Donnager, NAS is the Nauvoo etc.
- tylergetsay 2y agohttps://namingschemes.com/Main_Page https://namingschemes.com/Main_Page
- xxriss 2y agoThe trick is to pick a fun theme. For instance, I like to name all my machines after dwarfs. So dwarf1, dwarf2, etc etc
- welpo 2y agoI use characters from books I've enjoyed.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- CraigRo 2y agoSalads: PCs are named after lettuces Printers are tomatoes Routers are condiments like croutons Cameras are carrots
- blastonico 2y agoFood. Pudin, Pizza, Sushi, Cake, Fries, Spaghetti, etc.
- ydnaclementine 2y agoNot me, but I know someone who uses the names of galaxies. I use members of the wutang clan
- bananaboy 2y agoMine are all named after planets from Asimov’s Foundation books.
- senectus1 2y agoI got over the trend of naming them after cartoon characters/greek gods/etc a loooong time ago. Device use/users name/number. Esoteric names are just embarrasingly silly.
- mcint 2y agoFor personal devices, carried on me, they're used in many contexts, and so I choose simple names with some self-description. I'm currently using k2mbp, I pun this into a mountain theme on this host. My previous laptops have included, kmbp, mmbp, nmbp. I've liked this over descriptive or evocative names.
- ganondork 2y agoCharacters from the Mario universe (except Mario and Luigi): toad, peach, bowser, goomba, kamek, etc.
- tsujamin 2y agoCelestial bodies for a while, lots asteroid and moon names to use! After I rationalised my home network it just feel back to “productname.internal.suffix”
- jareklupinski 2y agoI've only had at most 3 computers running at the same time that are truly 'mine', with no other function that I could name easily, like "NAS 2" or "Backup Home" They rotate the names Balthasar, Melchior, and Casper
- marssaxman 2y agoBack in the last century I worked for a company called MountainGate, where all the machines were predictably named after mountains. This suited my backpacking self well, and I continued the tradition with my own hardware after leaving: Dana, Tresidder, Hoffman, Lyell... Anarchist writers are my present theme: Goldman, Proudhon, Bookchin, Kropotkin... perhaps Graeber will be next.
- ricktdotorg 2y agorelated to this, in my first tech job as a UNIX guy at a Wall St. bank, my mentor was really into Hawaii, all the servers in our group were named after hawaiian volcanoes, e.g. mahukona, maunakea, kilauea, hualalai, etc. it was NOT fun, all of us kinda hated it, but i suppose it did engender in us a strong attention to detail!
- mintplant 2y agoDragon name generator: https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/dragon-names.php https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/dragon-names.php
- apple4ever 2y agoI use names from Stargate. Ships are personal devices, races are servers, planets are network devices, etc.
- rasse 2y agoCharacter names from the novel Wittgenstein's Mistress. For example "Kate".
- monotux 2y agoI have a wordlist I just chose a random name from. The words contained in the list are supposed to be short & unique. https://git.sr.ht/~monotux/homelab/blob/90fcbc11cc6cf1c73900e25ab6a7bb1cfbb5f035/wordlist.txt https://git.sr.ht/~monotux/homelab/blob/90fcbc11cc6cf1c73900...
- JohnFen 2y agoWith a few exceptions, types of knives (because knives are symbolic of logical thought). Once a machine is given a name, that name is never reused. I don't match the hostname to the purpose of the machine specifically to avoid the problem of the machine's purpose changing, and to make it easier to avoid reusing names.
- oh_nice_marmot 2y agoPlaces where I felt happiest: a beach, a mountain, a city.
- mPReDiToR 2y agoContext - I'm nearly 50 and had a ZX81. Doom on an IPX network with 486 level machines is where I had to start naming devices for LAN parties. As a teenage boy I gave the computers female names which appealed to me. Never people I knew except by coincidence, but Sarena, Lucy, Kim, &c. were assigned to a machine once without being reused. Maybe they had a mindspace as characters in my life? As time passed and I started living with various partners, names have changed to a more adult way of working. I now have abbreviated owner and device descriptor. Exempli gratia: 'PredBook' is my Panasonic Toughbook. 'PredPS4' is self explanatory.
- self_awareness 2y agoDOTA2 characters. Pudge is for a fat server with some VMs and more RAM. Invoker is multi-purpose VPS without a specified one goal. Riki is a RPi. Rylai (Crystal Maiden) is for a MacMini, because it's all white and reminds me of snow. I had Meepo for hosting a Matrix instance. Social communication means multiple people, so Meepo seems to fit perfectly. But it's switched off now (Meepo is not an easy character to play). I have Ostarion for a seedbox, I'm switching providers from time to time, and I keep killing it and raising a new instance once every while.
- ochronus 2y agoI use Japanese god/goddess names :)
- mustardo 2y agoOne place I worked at used Red Dwarf characters, Hollister, Cat, Toaster, Rimmer etc TV show characters can be good I normally use Greek gods for snowflake servers A concatenation of owner / location and device for LAN devices. JohnsPixel4, LoungeTV,
- Crono 2y agoCharacters from Beyond Good and Evil.
- elseleigh 2y agoFor twenty years I've used early church fathers, one device for each letter of the alphabet. So Ambrose, Basil, Clement, Dionysius. When a device is retired, a new device can take that letter of the alphabet with a different name, so Ambrose is replaced by Augustine, for example.
- barking_dog 2y agoI use Seinfeld characters - major characters for main servers, minor characters for other, tangential servers. Not very original, but works for me :)