I take a word that’s related to the purpose of the new host and put it in an online translator and cycle through languages until I get something cool.

I use the names of greek deities for my host names, mostly geared towards the function of the server/computer.

• Nyx (dark-blue laptop)
• Hypnos (gaming machine)
• Argus (pi-hole and reverse proxy)
• Prometheus (minecraft server)

I originally named all my hardware after members of the Wu-Tang Clan plus some close affiliates, but I actually ran out of names, so now I use MFDOOM aliases for my workstations, and keep Wu-Tang for infrastructure, because it’s for the children.

Every computer I own is an autobot. My primary machine is always Optimus Prime, has been since 2008. Other machines get other names generally slightly inspired by their role / nature. Bumblebee and CliffJumper are miniPCs of various persuasions, Preceptor is my “mess around with AI” box, my big server that handles most of my data and network services is Wheeljack, my Macbook is Mirage, my backup server is Powerglide, my TV (which is an old Dell all in One running Linux Mint) is UltraMagnus.

The printer’s name is Marvin, from HHGTTG.

It never wants to work and always complains.

Used to be names from Neuromancer like “ono-sendai” and variations of that.

Now laptop is “flat”, server is named after it’s purpose like log, mail, mon, hosting, storage, etc.

All my hostnames are after Zen Buddhist concepts, like shikaku, hongaku, mushin, wuwei, jiyu, etc. My printer is the only thing that breaks this trend, it is named pos

References to The Dark Tower or Murakami characters.

Asterix & Obelix themed.

• Asterix is a rpi4, strong and small with ssd running dockers with homeassistant, revproxy and webserver, and camera storage.
• Idefix is a rpi3, mainly test only nowadays.
• Obelix is my desktop running voidlinux.

I used to have Pneumatix which is the mailman as the mail server and Panoramix, the druid, as domoticz server, Heroix, chief, as firewall and Bellefleur, beauty, as webserver 😉 All were LXD virtual servers on a pentium 3. I try to find a character matching the functionality. Except for domoticz all are now dockers on Asterix, so less use of funny names.

Non linux machines would be roman names from Asterix & Obelix, but I have none …

At work we used famous dogs. Laika, Pluto, Cerberus etc

Rock types and Greek gods. Everything from emerald to Aphrodite.

My little pony. My pihole is pinkypie, mediaserver trottingham, homeassistant is ponyville, and my backup server is canterlot. And so on… :)

I have pebble, pabble, pibble, rebble, rabble, ribble and nibble.

Though the primary server is old enough that it was from a time when I named everything after Transformers, so it’s Shockwave.

Mine are named after the penguins from the Madagascar movie : Skipper, Private, Kowalski, and Rico.

Unfortunately there’s only four so I often supplement with a suffix. For example, I’ve got an old windows laptop kicking around that is “rico-w”

… I should really commit to a naming scheme with a wider array of options.

I named mine after Rocket League cars.

• Octane (main desktop)
• Breakout (laptop)
• Dominus (laptop; older, larger)