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. 😅 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.
Now let your pants down and tell me all about
your embarrassing host names!
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)
My two wifi bands have always been Castor and Pollux.
My home network is called The IT Clowd with these devices:
- Moss - physical server
- Roy - physical server
- Jen - vm - main docker host
- Richmond - vm - *arr stack
- Denholm - vm - management, monitoring
- Douglas - vm - Home Assistant stack
- Basement - vm - development server
Thats awesome
Lol your arr stack.
"Jen what did you do?! I told you never open that door!"
The printer’s name is Marvin, from HHGTTG.
It never wants to work and always complains.
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
This is my scheme as well! Pretty much to the t. Except my HTPC is hypnotoad and nibbler is my NAS.
OMG Hypnotoad HTPC is so much better! Why didn’t I thnnk of that?
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.
Why limit yourself to the penguins?
I name my devices after greek gods based on what I’m going in life at the time or after what their purpose is.
I named my first gaming PC “Poseidon” when I was doing ship related work. Now it’s my server.
My gaming PC is “Asclepius”, the Greek god of healing. Built when I got into healthcare.
Hermes, god of messeges, is my lil pi that helps with routing (pihole, pivpn, nginx).
My HTPC is Dionysus, Greek god of wine and parties.
My thinkpad is Persephone cus it looks good but doesn’t do much. I might rename it.
The services that I run on these are just named “device-service” e.g. hermes-nginx
fuck, this is way better than my current naming scheme of "customer-<devicepurpose>, I’m stealing it for my next setup.
I do the same but Egyptian
localhost
Why: for privacy/anonymity concerns
Hmm, what does localhost.local do if you use mdns?
Also, your router must be a bit confusing:
- localhost - 192.168.1.2
- localhost - 192.168.1.3
- …
Fixes IP for me, but I admit I don’t have a lot of services to access to like OP does
I named mine after Rocket League cars.
- Octane (main desktop)
- Breakout (laptop)
- Dominus (laptop; older, larger)
I’ve always done characters from Beatles songs
- Walrus
- Martha
- Her-Majesty
- Submarine
- MissLizzy
- Blackbird
- NowhereMan
- SgtPepper
- Jojo
For my servers I try to use names from the Final Fantasy universe. Lately been focusing on FFXI end game bosses.
Kirin (opnsense firewall) Byakko (proxmox host) Tiamat (proxmox backup) Shiva (Nas)
The only clever virtual machine names I care to brag about are: DockBox (VM running docker) Jellxc (proxmox lxc running jellyfin)
I use characters from whichever book I’m reading at the time. Examples:
- Arya: From ASOIAF, a small but powerful Ultrabook
- Cthulhu: From HP Lovecraft, a huge 17" laptop
- Horus: From the Horus Heresy books, A powerful laptop
- Binky: Death’s white horse from discworld, a white desktop
- Peaches: A rat that always carries a book with her. My home server
I Used Gondolin for my PC but after reinstalling I didn’t put it back on and left the default
My devices are named after planets from Doctor Who: mondas, telos, skaro, villengard.
Naming my devices after stars. Specifically stars in Ursa-Major
Desktop: alioth Laptop: alkaid Smartphone: alcor SteamDeck: dubhe Server: sarir
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/wordsUsername checks out
You have a mighty big hand if you reach l and a with the same one
Mine just moves 😉
Yes, yours too.











