Achhina's Digital Garden

Hostname Naming Convention

4 min read

Naming convention for personal devices and servers (laptops, desktops, NAS, future homelab hosts).

Decision

Name machines after figures from Greek and Norse mythology, following the guidance in RFC 1178 — Choosing a Name for Your Computer (D. Libes, 1990).

  • Status: decided (2026-04-26)
  • Scope: all personally-owned machines (laptops, desktops, servers, VMs that live longer than a week). Excludes ephemeral/work-issued hardware.

Context

Hostnames have been ad-hoc (mbp-<year> style, e.g. mbp-2024). That works for three machines today but breaks down as the fleet grows or when a machine is replaced in the same year, and it leaks hardware-vintage info into a name that should outlive the hardware. RFC 1178 codifies what “good” looks like.

RFC 1178 guidelines applied:

  • Use words/names from a common theme. Themes scale; ad-hoc names don’t.
  • Don’t use names tied to function, location, or hardware. Those change; the name shouldn’t have to.
  • Keep names short (typeable, memorable) and unique (no shared prefixes that confuse tab-completion).
  • Avoid overloaded or ambiguous names. Skip anything that collides with common shell commands or DNS names elsewhere.

Alternatives Considered

  • Year/model-based (mbp-2024, status quo): self-documenting but couples name to hardware vintage; collides on same-year replacements; RFC 1178 explicitly warns against it.
  • Function-based (dev, media, nas): clear at a glance but breaks the moment a role changes — also called out in RFC 1178.
  • Tolkien: strong theme, large set, but rivendell/gandalf are longer to type than mythology equivalents.
  • Stars/constellations: clean and short, but less personally resonant.
  • Coffee drinks / cocktails: playful, but smaller “memorable” set and overlaps with common product names.

Greek + Norse mythology wins on: large set (hundreds of figures across both pantheons), short typeable names (mostly 4–7 chars), culturally familiar enough to recall without a lookup table, and emotionally resonant — picking a name becomes a small act of characterization for the machine.

Rationale

Greek and Norse share a pool of compact, distinctive names with strong individual identities. Mixing both pantheons buys headroom (the fleet can grow past a single mythology) without sacrificing coherence — they read as one theme: “old-world mythology.” When two figures across pantheons overlap thematically (sky-father: zeus/odin; thunder: no Greek counterpart to thor), pick whichever fits the machine’s character.

Fleet

Rolling rollout — rename as each machine is reprovisioned or its config naturally churns. No big-bang renaming.

MachineCurrentPlannedStatusNotes
MBP 2024 (M4)atlasatlasactiveFirst machine on the new convention. See MacBook M4 2025 Migration.
MBP 2020mbp-2020TBDpendingRename at next reprovision.
MBP 2010mbp-2010TBDpendingRename at next reprovision (or retire).
Future server / NAS—TBDpendingPick from the candidate pool below when provisioned.

Candidate pool

Greek: apollo, athena, hermes, hades, ares, helios, eros, nyx, iris, pan. Norse: odin, thor, loki, freya, tyr, bragi, idun, heimdall, mimir, vidar.

Pick by character fit:

  • Heavy-duty / always-on (server, NAS): atlas, odin, mimir.
  • Fast / interactive (daily-driver laptop): hermes, iris, bragi.
  • Long-lived / wise (archive box, knowledge host): athena, mimir.
  • Old / retired: hades, nyx.

Operational Notes

macOS rename procedure

A “complete” rename on Darwin requires updating all three hostname fields. Setting only one leaves the others stale and confuses tools that read the wrong source. See macOS Hostname Layers for what each field controls and why.

sudo scutil --set HostName      <name>   # BSD hostname — what `hostname(1)` returns
sudo scutil --set LocalHostName <name>   # Bonjour/mDNS — `<name>.local`
sudo scutil --set ComputerName  <name>   # Finder / AirDrop / sharing display

Verify:

scutil --get HostName; scutil --get LocalHostName; scutil --get ComputerName; hostname

Also confirm System Settings → General → Sharing → (edit pencil next to Local hostname) → “Use dynamic global hostname” is OFF, otherwise DHCP can silently override HostName when joining new networks.

Linux rename procedure

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname <name>

General

  • Lowercase canonical for HostName / LocalHostName; uppercase only in ComputerName if desired.
  • Mythology names don’t collide with common Unix tools (sanity-checked: none of the candidate-pool names shadow a binary in coreutils or bsdmainutils).
  • When this convention lives behind a private host-flake (see Dotfiles Host Profiles via Private Flake), the hostname becomes the natural axis for hosts/<name>/ modules.
  • The 2024 MBP rename is tracked in MacBook M4 2025 Migration and the device entry Apple MacBook Pro M4 Max 16-inch.

References

Graph View

Backlinks