I use elements from the periodic table. The ones that sound cool!

Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Neon, Tungsten, Helium, Sodium, etc

Wifi names are after noble gases.

PC hardware are all stable metals.

iPhone/iPad accessories are all non-metals.

and finally, random IOT devices are radioactive elements.

Me too on the periodic table names, but with a bit of creativity related to the machine too:

- Helium - my Surface 3, because it's light

- Lead - my heavy Linux laptop

- Lithium - the Mac Mini I bought to keep from going crazy using a decade old Macbook Pro for iOS development

- Caesium - my Dell "workstation" Windows laptop, because I bought it to save time (compared to running Windows + Visual Studio in a VM)

- Uranium and Thorium - the beefy Xeon workstations that run a bunch of VMs and things - named because they put out so much heat that they might be radioactive

It's quite funny that we share the host names Helium and Caesium. My Linux machines are radioactive because I tinker with them a lot and am bound to reinstall every few months.

Heh, yeah, there's that too...

>random IOT devices are radioactive elements.

Scheme-compliant _and_ metaphorically apt. Love it.

Please tell me you're using Technetium for something special.

Perfect for the box doing muscle tissue image processing

Yes! This site may be of interest: https://namingschemes.com/

Hope my shitty server won't die now.. I have been planning to migrate this to faster stuff..

This is a gold mine!

The best thing about this approach is that replacment computers can use related but distinct versions of their ancestor's names.

For instance, my old server was called TheQ (i.e. 'Q' from James Bond) and the new one is named Judy, because Judy Dench plays 'M' in the most recent films. It's convoluted, but it's neat to have what is effectively your own mythology.

I've been using character names from my favourite movies. A different movie for each network (or each zone in a network, or however you want to categorise it).

Home network is all character names from LOTR, home office is Expanse, etc.

It's fun to try pick suitable names from the movie, for the device, eg my HTPC is Gimli, because it's a small case but carries more than its weight. Gaming PC is Gandalf because it's entirely white.

Sub-categories of characters is good for sub-categories of devices, so all our phones/tablets are named after the Elves.

The main problem with this method is the HOURS you spend angsting over the correct names because it's actually fun.

I once worked somewhere that used locations from LOTR, but by the time I got there, they were down to obscure things on the map that you wouldn't know if you weren't a true fan.

In which Tolkien language do you select the names?

We had servers like Rauros and Caradhras, but all of the newer machines had numbers, since they were well into going virtual when I got there.

I've used characters from sesame street, solar system objects, stars (astronomical), colors, and classic car models (with subnets grouped by manufacturer).

Back in college, the CS department used planets. The department I worked in used organ names (brain and pineal being the two I recall). At my previous job, we used city/town names for virtual machines (plenty to choose from, and some quite amusing, like "truth-or-consequences" (in New Mexico for the record)).

i use the names of my favorite greek gods/goddesses in a (slightly) meaningful way. my monster tower is ATHENA, the goddess of knowledge. my laptop is ARTEMIS the hunter, and my phone is fleet-footed HERMES.

This particular theme is extremely common for servers.

I used to enjoy using names from The Wheel of Time series, the forsaken especially. I’ll admit to spending a bit more time than was practical on the endeavor, but I think it sort of helped me “bond” and care more about them?

Ah, it was fun at any rate. I miss you, Lanfear!