Selfhosted

I use a naming convention for my homelab stuff that is descriptive enough for future reference in case I don't touch the machine in a while.

so for example if you have a local domain you use for internal work and the name is Leet Hax my naming would look something like this

leethax_prd01, leethax_prd02, leethax_proxmox01, leethax_nextcloud01, leethax_plex01

you get the idea, in my network I don't add the underscore but I figured for explanation sakes I would here. I'm sure without explaining what each server is, whether it's a VM from proxmox or an actual machine, you know what they are when they show up on your router. I added the sequence numbering for future proofing my self hosted setup in case I get another machine in the future.

I name my personal devices after Nasa projects and launches and my wife, well her phone is just called iPhone 1, 2, 3 etc. so everything is easy to spot on my home network.

Science fiction spacecraft - Enterprise, Nostromo, Tardis, Falcon, etc.

I usually name mine after songs that I happen to be listening to at the moment.

I use Grecian gods, based as much as possible after what they do. Towards the end it kinda breaks down.

Kronos - Primary Proxmox
Hera - Ubuntu Server VM
Charon - Pihole VM
Hades - Secondary Proxmox
Ares - Gaming Desktop
Hestia - Home assistant
Artemis - Laptop
Hermes - Roomba
Orpheus - Torrent box
Hermes - Pixel 6 Pro

I name all my computers after NZ Birds in our native language Māori. So far I have used, Pukeko, Takahe, Kakapo, Weka, Ruru, Piwakawaka and my latest laptop Kahu

I go with main character names from good anime. So Kusanagi, Vash, Lelouch, Kakashi, etc.

I used to invent "funny" names, but at some point it became a chore and I also found I'm forgetting some names or spelling when I need it.

Call me boring, but doing enterprise system admin jobs for years I recently started to adopt functional naming convention.

This is what I have now: [location code][OS code][type vm/ct][environment code][workload][index]

So the first production DB linux VM in my primary Los Angeles location will be named LA1LVMPDB1 And my second test Nextcloud container hosted in the same location will be named LA2LCTTNC2.

I still have to invent short names for workload, which is harder for specialized containers, but overall this makes it all more manageable.

All my homelab stuff is boring. Host machine names are just 'model ' + '-' + 'increment'. VMs and containers are either service or service + increment.

Whimsical names and themes are fun, but don't scale and I need the mental bandwidth for other things than mapping service to machine etc.

Fun fact: When AOL was still operating in Germany, internal servers in their network were named after characters / things from Asterix comics, like Asterix, Obelix, Idefix, Miraculix and even Hinkelstein (menhir). When Telecom Italia bought them up they unfortunately got rid of all these and replaced them with standard corpo server names. Source: I worked there.

US states. If I have more than 50 different host names to manage, I should re-evaluate my hobbies. And then lazily move on to US state capitals.

On my labs cluster they are named after famous physicists

cakes then a different type of cake. ie cakesFlan

I recently switched to using the periodic table. I made myself a nice little spreadsheet to keep track of it all. I used to name hosts after random stuff like cereal, snacks, or just plain old [my first name]-desktop.

Names of Greek letters.

Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon...

I’ve used Star Trek names before, but in general I’ve just started naming them what they’re used for (ex. Dev-Mint, StorageCore)

I don't have a very consistent naming theme. I've used various names related to music, science, and art. I have a decomissioned machine named "numbers" for example.

However, I would like to point out we have plenty more than 8 celestial bodies of interest in the solar system if you include Eris, Ceres, Pluto, Makemake, the moons of Jupiter, and more. It might not be indefinitely extendable, but may help in the short term.

Started with Evangelion Magi naming and now I just use the pet name generator in Terraform.

Random_pet

Domestic no Kanojo is an anime that people describe as rubbish. Maybe it is, depending on where you're coming from, but I was invested in it, and so decided to honour the anime/manga by naming my servers "Hina Tachibana", "Natsuo Fujii", "Rui Tachibana" and "Miu Ashihara".

Star Trek ships at home. And Game of Thrones characters at work.

I use Roman authors, with the machine/VM's purpose (often vaguely) linked to what the author was known for. For example, my NAS is called Tacitus (a historian), while my game server is called Plautus (a playwright). A couple services predate my schema (like my Pihole and OPNSense box) and are named descriptively.

I name devices after Greek Gods / Goddesses. My main server is called Olympus.

I've been doing birds. So far I just have Cardinal, Bluebird, and Sparrow

I use the names of chemical elements, but with two twists: I assign them in the order in which they appear in the song "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer, and I use the German names. So I have (or had), among others, Wasserstoff, Sauerstoff, Stickstoff, etc ...

Star types, stellar objects, planet names, etc...

WoW places. Since some of my servers died, I'm currently only sitting on dark portal (Firewall), and the Stranglethorn Valley server with Gurubashi Arena (Plex), Booty Bay (you can imagine) and wild shore (shared file system VM)

Ship names from the expanse.

My PC is the Rocinante My home server was previously the Behemoth, put it in a smaller case so now it’s Medina.

Scientists/inventors for me - bonus points if I can find one related to the machine's purpose (Kodi machine named after a contributor to the TV for example)

Lowercaps Dwarfplanets. chaos, orcus, ixion, ceres, haumea, makemake, etc. DHCP/router is named sol

I give them weird syntax names so if someone was to hack in the names wouldn't give away what they are immediately. I don't reuse numbers so that if I rebuild something it gets a new num.

Location-Ordinal-NetworkNum-Counter Eg AU-01-01-01

Containers are just their application name except where I have more than 1 then its Application01,02,etc.

I've never thought about this, but now that you bring it to my attention I think I'd go with a combination of mineral-flower, so for example "tourmaline-calendula".
Also to automate that, I saw that there is this neat website perchance.org that you can use to construct random word generators, I'm wondering if there's an open source alternative though, that would be great

Pretty much same as you: If it works for NASA or it's a heavenly body, it works for me. Main PC is called SATURN V (SATURN for most things). Laptop is called HYPERION. Currently saving up to replace SATURN with ARTEMIS. Might throw in a GAIA NAS/virtualization server at some point, if cash flow allows for it. I'm not as picky about my family's devices that I've set up, though... They'll keep their randomly generated names, mostly out of laziness.

I do Reboot characters, since I'm old! Kind of running low now but I call each of my phones Glitch and it makes me very happy.

"People" names that are alliterative with the actual machine type. E.g. PeterPi, WillWhitebox, NancyNAS, LarryLePotato

Russian spacecraft and rockets.

Currently I have N1 as my home server and my desktop is Energia. I've previously had Proton and Soyuz etc.

All of my servers are named after characters from the Dragon Ball universe.

Don't recommend doing an 'obscured' naming scheme,, hate having to refer to a spreadsheet to know what server does what because I tend to spin up a lot of random stuff. Highly recommend using functional names that are easy for your brain to remember, like an acronym for whatever service or types of services it's running.

Just stupid puns that come to mind when I set it up. Synology NAS is "Rainy" since the box had "be your own cloud" written on it. M1 MacBook is "Apple Pie" because being ARM it's just a big Raspberry Pi right? Etc

Bird species, most of the time. I look for a bird that seems to have some connection with the intended purpose of the box, then use that. e.g. my work computer's hostname is cormorant.

I used to work in the GRASP lab at Penn, and my predecessor there was John Bradley of xv fame. He had started naming all the machines after fish.

When I got there I continued the practice, naming some tiny computers being used for mini robots after different types of goldfish.

In my current job, years ago, I managed a group of Linux servers, and I named them after Demons (Lucifer, Asmodeus, Azrael, Beelzebub, etc.).

At this point, there is a specific naming convention in use where I'm at, and the name is limited to identifying organization, application, and server type.

For my clients, we just use company shortcode+role, IE Northern Energy Exchange would be NEE-DC (domain controller) NEE-FS (file server) NEE-APP, NEE-DT-1 (desktop #1), NEE-LT-1 (laptop #1) etc. At home, my network is called Asgard and each device is related to that in some way, all themed appropriately.

My Raspberry Pi's are named after planets and large bodies on the Solar system.

My servers are named after The Expanse characters and ships.

VM's and CT's after their usage with a tag in Proxmox for the OS used.