Naming devices is fun

When I was a teenager, I kept visiting Stefan Didak’s website over and over again because I though he had the coolest computer setup ever. I dreamt of the day when I’d have enough money to build something similar. By the time I got there, I didn’t want a room full of devices and screens anymore and was happy with a laptop and a single screen.

One thing stuck with me though. In addition to just a cool multi-screen setup, Stefan also gave his workstations and servers names. Not just “Laptop” or “Desktop-123” but cool names like Argon, Xenon and Poseidon, to name a few.

When I saw W. Thomas Leroux and Jake Coombs discuss their naming schemes in Mastodon, and Jake referencing Alex Chan’s How I name my computers and Robb Knight’s Naming my computers, I wanted to join the fun and talk about my naming scheme. One of the best parts of setting up a new system or device is giving it a name and welcoming it to the family.

I’m a huge sci-fi fan and from very early on I started naming my devices based on fictional stars, planets, starships and so on.

I have had two NAS servers and the first one was called UrsaMajor and when I upgraded into a more modern and smaller NAS, I named it in honor of the first one as UrsaMinor. When I got a Raspberry Pi as my companion for iPad on the go, I named it Starfighter as it was my main machine on the go. My phone’s an X-Wing.

The last desktop I owned was Babylon 5 as it was a big boi and my main system at the time so it deserved the highest of honors. My current laptop is Endor as I like to imagine small ewoks running around keeping all the processes running.

My current work laptop is the odd one out as it has a very corporate name: the ID number that it was given at birth as a reference number in the inventory system.

It’s one of those fun silly things that makes me smile whenever I see the names. And since every computer gets its own identity, I don’t end up with 3 “Juhis’s Macbook” computers if I ever have multiple ones in a network at the same time.

Update 8.8.2025: Varun also shared his naming pattern.