this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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Hi fellow selfhosters!

What hostnames do you use for your systems and services?
And maybe why if it's an interesting story.

I'll start:
Steam Deck: krax
Smartphone: krix (once I get LineageOS installed again)
MiniPC: krux
Reserved for future use: krex & krox

Creative, I know. πŸ˜… The names have no deeper meaning. The x comes from Linux. That's it.

I know some of you use god names of certain pantheons, such as Thor. But I find that boring as a lot of people are doing that. Β 
Β 
Β 

Now let your pants down and tell me all about

your embarrassing host names!

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Huh. I thought for sure someone else would be using my scheme.

LAN computers are all Tolkien swords: sting, orcrist, gurthang, glamdring, etc. If I run out of swords, I'll start adding other weapons: aeglost, the spear; dailir, the arrow. We don't get a lot of named battle axes, which I always thought weird; I'd think dwarves of all people would forge legendary axes, and certainly name them.

My WiFi and VPN networks are forests in Middle Earth: fangorn, bindbole, dimholt, lothlorien, etc. The only exception is my LAN itself which is... "lan". Because short.

My cloud VPSes are named after Greek Titans: hyperion, phaethusa, tethys, etc.

Mobile devices have whatever names they come with, because they're so ephemeral.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

You had me digging through old hosts files and ssh configs to find some of these.

I try to name them something that resembles what they do or has something to do with what their purpose is.

Short is good, and if it can match more than one of the machine's purpose/os/software/look, the better.

If it's some sort of personal machine, it gets a personal name

Phones

  • traveller
  • pawn
  • rook
  • bishop

Virtual Workstations

  • boxy

  • moxy

  • sandbox

  • cloud

  • ship lxc container host

  • dock docker host

Laptops

  • ciel Razer blade stealth with a rainbow LED keyboard
  • arc runs arch.
  • lled is a dell

Desktops

  • bench
  • citadel
  • bastion
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Mine are all named for the colour of the case, or case accent when ambiguous, though network infrastructure items are named for their models, being the typical default.

I sometimes use A records or mDNS-SD for the actual services provided and use a *.home.arpa. domain.

Another theme at another site is native fauna and flora names.

No cringe, no pop culture.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

My server is still called driveway because the install originated in an HP laptop a customer ran over with their car. Motherboard still worked though!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I've gone through lots of themes. These days it's mostly where things are or what they are for. Topshelf, closet, code lives on monkey, work laptop is named work. I've had more fun themes but the novelty wore off.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I named my old white bitfenix prodigy m "Baymax" because it was white and had rounded edges.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Server (big iron): Bender

Desktop (main character): Fry

Laptop (for accounting): Hermes

Netbook (small and dumb): Nibbler

Phone (held to my head): BrainSlug

HTPC (one big viewport): Leela

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Backup: VEEAM01
DC: DC1
VM for taxes and other stuff I don't want on my main pc: ZAHLNIX01 (tl: not paying anything)
NAS01: My NAS file share VM
TEST01: Testing VM
Appoxo-PC2: My main PC (as it's mark 2)
Proxmox host: PVE2 (I planned a cluster but have no other nuc to use in the cluster)
NAS: Current jellyfin and main docker host
PiNAS02: My Raspberry Pi 4

As you see: Very creative.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My first computer job was at a college that used names from ancient history and mythology. So I mostly still do that. Medea is my plex server. Zeus and Hera are the hosts for docker and VMs. Heimdall is the router.

The only break in the pattern is my storage, which is currently NASC and NASD...

Oh and my personal machine used to be HAL_9000 (complete with wallpaper and theme sounds) but now I just name it "box."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

All my personal devices are named "AHE"+n. So the abbreviation for "at heart engineer"+ a letter signifying the device. So my phone is "AHEM", my laptop is "AHEL", my desktop is "aheo" (O for office), my server is "ahes".

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

All swearwords, all the time. Generally puns on the servers purpose.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

At home, colors Whatever color the purpose is.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

All of mine are animals, chosen similar to their functions (ie my 2-in-1 is "weasel", my Chimera VM buildhost is a busy/hard-working "beaver" (busy "bumblebee" was taken by my old Gentoo binhost VM), "orca" is my media server (big black PC case), "bluejay" is my rpi (tiny, in a blue TARDIS case), etc.

It's fun! (I have too many computers.)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

I am a simple person.

My PC: Panda
My wifes PC: notpanda
Docker VM: dockerhost.home

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

My devices are cringely named after songs in Haken's discography.

Desktop is MESSIAH. Laptop is AFFINITY. Phone is NIGHTINGALE. Steam Deck is SHAPESHIFTER. Router (and its WAP) is PORTALS. My NAS is the only one that falls outside of this, it's generically (last name)NetNAS. I should rename it, but I don't want to break anything πŸ˜…

Eta: changed my NAS' hostname is ARCHITECT. Nothing broke! Yay for me.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fictional planet names (mostly early Star Wars because I’m old): Dantooine, Naboo, Tatooine, Jabba (not a planet, but server for β€œdata storage” hence smuggler reference), Bespin and odd one out Arrakis (laptop).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Jabba could've been NalHutta

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

@Krik devnull, devzero, devrandom
obv, devnull runs fileserver

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

My only currently active machine is a laptop named buttwarmer as per my cat's suggestion.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Reserved for future use: krex & krox

Poor "kryx".

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Three-letter words that can be typed with one hand, since I have to type them frequently.

$ egrep "^([qwertasdfgzxcvb]{3}|[yuiophjkllnm]{3})$" /usr/share/dict/words
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

ok so don't hate me but h001, h002, h003, and so on.

That's h for host. I also use n to number networks, and k to number physical keys.

I list them all in my keepassxc password database, where I can include any additional information.

With the prevalence of vms, docker containers, and docker networks, there's just too many things to name. By numbering them I can just side step that whole game.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

I tend to use food names, like tomato and sausage. But no potato, and definitely no apple.

I also utilize the special-use domain home.arpa for all my LAN systems, so accidental collisions are largely impossible.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

'fuck' and the family of 'fucking'

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I mostly use battlestar galactica ship names for my own hardware, but it's been mixed with boring '.mydomain.foo' names as well. I should rename a bunch of stuff around and include them in my DNS.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

AI from fiction:

HAL M.O.T.H.E.R AM Jarvis

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think a similar post came few time ago, but no ashamed in my case. I use late pet names, for me as a tribute to their memory. Also, I try to put some logic in the name, like the squirrel name for a lightweight VM with not much services / workload or dog name for the reverse proxy (guardian function).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

At home at least try to put some meaning, but at corporate environments as some have mention I got with the classical location-function-environment-XXX ^_^U

Edit: some typos, because fat-fingers are a thing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Man I’m lame.

Used to be {env}-function##

Now it’s {env}-{vlanlocation}-function##

VLAN location such as DMZ, Infra, Jump for jump boxes, IOTSec or IOTInsec, Etc

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

After a long career in tech, one of the things I start to push for when I inevitably take over ops at my new job is to eliminate the silly names.

I don't do it because I hate fun, I do it because when someone yells, "Squirtle has dropped off the network!" I don't want to have to go consult a lookup table to learn that Squirtle is a staging environment postgres replica and not the primary billing database.

As a result, I apply the same standards to my home network without shame.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I name mine after space! Earth, Moon, Mars, Saturn, etc...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You're naming them out of the stuff that specifically isn't space!

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm in the name after location and function fraction. All but my printer, he's named Cthulhu because printers are a menace to humanity and it supports wake-on-LAN.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I use Arthurian legend related stuff. Servers and desktops are locations. My portable devices are the names of swords. IoT devices are more explicitly descriptive since I won't need to type in, but it's more important to recognize them when I see them, like lightswitch-livingroom.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I use some generic names.

  • Phone: phone
  • Current Laptop: fedora
  • Old laptop: laptop
  • Router: openwrt
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Lol, it's 20x easier when you're looking at a dump from nmap.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I name based on OS and location.

fedoraDesktop fedoraLaptop fedoraServer fedoraSchoolServer unraid qnap ubuntuServer

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Devices are named after characters from books I recently read, trying to match the name with the character of the book. But for virtual hosts for services I use their purpose (wiki, files, feed…) because I wasted too much time updating all the bookmarks last time I migrated to a new server.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

@Krik For my personal devices, i use the names of the 12 Colonies of Kobol from Battlestar Galactica. So I currently have 2 laptops: Aerilon and Caprica. When I get a new phone, I'll probably name it Scorpia or Tauron.

Choosing a good naming scheme depends on how many you need, and how often you add to your collection.

If you need some inspiration, check out this list. https://namingschemes.com/Main/_Page

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Current homelab+desktop+laptop host count here is 22. All anime characters or references. It’s a fairly large pool to pull from, so it’s worked for me for 20+ years now. Mobile devices (phones, tablets, etc) and game consoles aren’t really as clever though.

All of them are in a piHole DNS though so no host files keeps it easy to track. Services have names that mostly are just what they are though and cnames to the matching host that hosts them (or load balancer, whatever)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They're all some kind of machine. Steam deck: SteamMachineryV1

PC: ArchMachineryV2

Phone: Android_ΞΌMachine

Oddly enough my server goes by MonoVerse, which I named first and I guess it just stuck.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Lol, my server goes by "nas"

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