My main server is named Postulate (an idea that you assume for the sake of argument), my desktop is named Axiom (a proved postulate), and my backup server is named Corollary (an idea that follows from an axiom).
having read all these other comments, i'm now feeling like i should come up with a more creative naming scheme... for what it's worth, my phone is named bob.
I once named a load of servers for a helicopter company in the UK with elements. The cluster nodes were copper, silicon, etc. The cluster itself was called iron. The volumes were labelled fe_function.
It worked - it was easy to read and the bits that implied "cluster" were grouped appropriately. All the other servers had random elemental names unless they were associated in some way, in which case the group would be used. The engineers (real engineers with oil or distressingly nasty lubricants in their veins) loved it - it made sense, without being too quirky. It was very legible.
When those systems were hoicked out and replaced, the usual nonsense was applied: 2 char country code + 2 char site code etc etc ad nauseam. Followed by my absolute pet hate: 01. Oh so you might need 99 domain controllers? Yes you might, but not on one site.
Let's face it, it is mostly AD admins who don't get hostnames. I blame MS - their docs and blogs strive to be ... authoritative or at least look so. An entire generation (possibly two) of sysadmins have been sold up the river by MS and their wankery.
I completely agree with the "01" problem, it should be "001".
Single digit is great but then one service needs more than ten, or you keep rolling them over into new ones (one of our production server is 13 because it's the thirteen generation). But then I want all the numbers of have consistent patterns, so if one has two digits, they all have to have it.
My personal use computers are named after characters from the manga Tearmoon Empire Story, MiaLuna (storage server) - Anne (home desktop) - Ludwig (laptop).
My phones were named after JJBA characters (Jonathan Joestar - Joseph Joestar - Speedwagon)
Small form factor computers for automation are typically named after their purpose, without anything creative (PiMirrorDNS, PineKodi, PiPocket)
I currently only have a craptop, but I've settled on naming them after elements, vaguely based on the power of the machine. My craptop is called hydrogen. I also have a full installation on a USB drive called quark, being less than a full machine/element.
My stationary devices are named after evil characters from middle earth, ungoliant, gothmog, morgoth etc.
Mobile devices are named after good characters, illuvatar, gil-galad, elendil.
My dad uses native American tribes for names.
A five character name in the form of CVCVC that doesn't show up as a common English word. The main reason is that I want my colmena and host names to be nicely lined up, there is a lot of space in there, and it happens to be the pattern of a race of telepaths in my fantasty world where telepathy is loosely based off of IPv6 addresses and REST and remote RPC calls.
Previously, my computer names were based on Lojban gismu based on their use, so names like fraxu (forgive), briju (office), etc.
On the other hand, my dad's computer names are: bob, bob2, bob3, bob4, bob5, bob6, bob7, bob8, steve, bob9, bob10, bob11, bob12, bob13, bob14, bob15, and bob16.
My mother's company were all named off of international currencies (we were doing a stock trading project), so dollar, mark, franc, pound, euro, etc.
My other dad's computers are named after logical constructs: axiom, theory, etc. He was a scientist.
I like to have different naming schemes for different device classes.
Desktop computers: Greek gods
Laptops: Elements of the periodic table
Cloud servers: Norse gods
Home servers: Planets of the solar system
Raspberry Pis: Greek titans
My old desktop, now relegated to torrent/fileshare duty, is named USELESS-BRICK (you can guess why)
My brand new desktop is named SPEEDY-BRICK (you can also guess why)
The Rpi3 and Orange Pi 5 I use for small compute tasks, a printer server, random fucking around, etc are TINY-BRICK-1 and TINY-BRICK-2, respectively.
The random ATX server board that I used to use before the motherboard died was FlatBoard, because it didn't have a case, just a small steel backframe I welded up for it.
bemo (I know, I cant spell) - pihole/unbound/homeassistant/wireguard
Future servers will be named after any TV scifi tech that takes my fancy. (twiki, zen (or was it xen?), data, k-9, ada, marvin, romi, holly, bender, dolores). Any suggestions?
Mine are also literary. They are references to Sanderson's cosmere series and the names chosen reflect their purpose.
I have an old optiplex SFF which is called Preservation because it has a disk drive for ripping media, it's a disk wiping station for repurposing drives, and it's old hardware I'm preserving.
I've gone for a Neon Genesis Evangelion theme, so my router is SEELE, my Pi server is TheMagi, Thinkpad is Unit-00, Laptop is Unit-02, work device is Unit-03 (waiting to build my gaming PC for Unit-01). Then my SimpleLogin aliases are weapons like the sonic knife or lance of longinus.
Lazarus: My desktop PC that randomly died one day and would only work again after literally every component was replaced.
Akamas: My Fairphone 4, named after the son of Theseus, which was my Fairphone 3.
I mean, yeah, given how I replaced everything. However, my Fairphone 3 (which, in case you don't know, is designed to have all components replacable) was already Theseus at that time, so I went for the 'resurrection' theme instead
I started naming all of my devices based on their number mk1-mk6, then I realized it's hard to differentiate desktop from phone off a list. Now I've got:
Mkr1 - rack server
Mkp6 - phone 6
And desktops/laptops are just mkX depending on age. Then set static IPs based on their number
Albatross and Nautilus. Not really sure why, just like the sound of the words and the nautical theme. I still have 2 or 3 laying around unnamed because I haven't thought of any good words that fit the theme
My machines are named after physicists and mathematicians because that's what I aspire to be.
I don't remember the first three, but the most recent ones were Descartes, Euclid, Fourier, Gauss, Hilbert, Ivakhnenko, Jacobi, Kepler, Lovelace, Mandelbrot, Newton, Oppenheimer, Penrose, Quillen, Russell, Silverman[1]. Next will be Turing.
At home I name all devices after characters or planets from Ready Player One and Two. WadeWatts, parzival, daito, shoto, halliday and OASIS are my PC, laptop, phone, router, NAS or WiFi. I also have servers named ir0k, art3mis or halcydonia.
I remember working at a science project years ago with lots of workstations, where we named them all after James Bond villains like Stromberg, Goldfinger or Scaramanga. Eventually we ran out of villains and had to number them. 🙃
All ~60,000 servers are given 32-bit UUID's, plus a 3 word CNAME from 3 unique and distinct lists of nouns. i.e. a server would have an A record of 1b30fafd-0a28-4999-b51f-bfa2b8af68e5 and a CNAME of tiger-ball-hill. A few servers that I often SSH into will be given friendly cnames like "bastion1" or "ansible" or something like that.
I name them after their case or purpose. My truenas is just called truenas, its plex jail is just called plex, my laptops are yoga and starlite because those are their product line names. Desktop is frame because it uses a masterframe 700.
I am not very imaginative with naming things. And when I do get imaginative I just appear to have a mental disorder. My BG3 characters are Scrimpus, Scrompus, and Screeper.
Mine are all named after mythological creatures. It started with my tower being named Cerberus because it had 3 red LED fans and then just kept up from there. Hydra, Thoth, manticore, chimera. I'm deploying Baba Yaga this week, and Ratatoskr will be up eventually
I use famous computer scientists. Torvalds, Kernighan, Ritchie, Woz (for the MacBook). My most recent one was bought in Hampton VA, so I named it kjohnson after Katherine Johnson (as seen in the movie Hidden Figures, she used to work at the NASA facility in Hampton).
I think it's a good system, and I don't think I'll ever run out!
If you mean initiating connections from one computer on your local network to another, you need to install and enable avahi-daemon (or some other mDNS daemon) on the "fancy" one. Your router also needs to support and enable mDNS forwarding, but basically all of them do by default. Then just use your-hostname.local in place of the local IP address, and your computer will automatically resolve it using mDNS. It's different than regular DNS, so it doesn't need any special configuration to use it. And word to the wise: don't use uppercase or special characters in your hostname.