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.

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

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)

After starting with X-Men characters and quickly running out I moved to Star Wars planets as there are a lot more of them

I've changed my naming scheme so many times that its practically a set-of-sets at this point. But, "board games" is a good long one if you have a lot of machines.

Greek gods.

Zeus, ares, hera, dionysus, etc etc

Meta machines on my system offer data. Infra machines on my system run the network (infrastructure). But my favourite is naming all my HDD’s platters; Media Platters, Service Platters, etc.

pi

pi3

pi3v2

space

fusion

magnet

qdivision

I've not played for years but I still have a YuGiOh cards naming scheme.

I do models for laptops and case names for my built desktop. So Dell-3590 or my desktop is NR400.

I know who has what so its easy to manage if i want to cut off network access or transfer files.

Royal-Cat-(Computer type)

for example, Royal-Cat-PC or Royal-Cat-iPhone

I do robots from video games, movies, TV shows, etc.

2nd ww navy vessels (inspired by kancolle)

personal machines - destroyers
servers - battleships

I tried thematic names but I kept adding devices until it all fell apart.

Now I'm using generic nouns like: plaza, highway, bazaar, stadium, minefield, church...

urmom = main pc

fbi = rpi 4 with docker + pihole + 2x unbound

i use all the naming schemes. douglas adams, astronomy, greek letters, star trek ...

have to come up with a new concept every other machine.

*bble. Rabble Ribble Pebble Pibble Tribble Rebble Jibble Jabble Etc...

My Synology is named Atlas because it’s my main file storage box (and has a most of my services running on it).

My VPS is called Aurora after the atmospheric phenomenon because cloud server.

And my little laptop I installed a server Linux distro on is called Challenger because I find it challenging to work with Fedora Server sometimes

I use harry potter characters

I used names of fictional robots, androids and self-aware computers (though I avoided HAL for obvious reasons) for a long time. These days my wife and I usually go with an indirect reference to the function or hardware - Ex. a device named Anathema, or a Raspberry Pi server named Marie (as in Marie Callendar, a former local pie/restaurant chain). I had an expendable frankenputer for tinkering that I called RedShirt.

Currently trying to come up with a name other than Chris for the PineTab 2.

Edit to add: Places I've worked have used Roman emperors, drink brands, Simpsons characters, and of course basics like "IIS1" "MAIL4" "QA-3" and so on. Some would add numbers to the names sequentially, others would use the last octet of the IP address.

For work - No need to divulge. It's work/corporate standards likely similar to some folks that have listed here give or take some characters.

For home, Venture Brothers characters.

Used to use characters from Madagascar, swapping over to dankpods references. Dingus, Frank, Sexy Speaker, Old Mate Senny.

Solar system. My gaming machine is called Titan, my Pihole is called Asteriods, my Lemmy machine Callisto and on it goes. 😀

looks like I'm one of the many that use Star Trek ships for my naming scheme:

Enterprise - My gaming PC
Kumari (Gen. Shran's ship) - my debian laptop
Defiant - another debian laptop (a two-in-one ultraportable)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.

[Thread #2 for this sub, first seen 18th Jul 2023, 21:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Mine are named after mythical Asian creatures.

Phoenix, Kirin, Yuki-onna, Dragon, Kodama, etc etc

Futurama characters: Farnsworth, Calculon, Nibbler, Wernstrom, Clamps

I name mine after fictional planets.

Mine machines are all named after Final Fantasy Summons/Espers/Eidolons/Aeons/Primals.

My main proxmox node is Bahamut. I try to pick a suitable summon that matches the host but that doesn't always work.

In college, they were all the secret identity for versions of the Flash. Since then, I've expanded to other comic book super heroes.

I name my machines after my cats.

My server is named Yggdrasil and my devices are named after the 9 realms.

I started with Die Hard characters (Hansgruber, NakatomiVault for Nas, John McClane, etc) but lately have been doing Back to the Future. I've got a Marty McFly, DocBrown (old server), and BiffTannen.

I use futhark runes for my machines and set an ASCII representation of the rune symbol as the /etc/{issue,motd}

Sounds like you could start using the names of moons. But a pantheon does sound like a good system too, should also include the titans.

Usually just names/lyrics of my favorite songs
iPhone: ByeByeBaby
AirPods: You're on your own, kid
Laptop: InnerMonologue
Except just for fun, I named my HomePod Cortana

Also some kind of Machinery. "GameMachine" for my Xbox "BigMachine" for my PC "MiniMachine" for my Phone "MicroMachine" for my Pi

Except my small 2-in-1 Laptop. That's "decepticon". Because it's an Asus Transformer Book.