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+Network Working Group                                          D. Libes
+Request for Comments: 1178                Integrated Systems Group/NIST
+FYI: 5                                                      August 1990
+
+
+                   Choosing a Name for Your Computer
+
+Status of this Memo
+
+   This FYI RFC is a republication of a Communications of the ACM
+   article on guidelines on what to do and what not to do when naming
+   your computer [1].  This memo provides information for the Internet
+   community.  It does not specify any standard.
+
+   Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
+
+Abstract
+
+   In order to easily distinguish between multiple computers, we give
+   them names.  Experience has taught us that it is as easy to choose
+   bad names as it is to choose good ones.  This essay presents
+   guidelines for deciding what makes a name good or bad.
+
+   Keywords: domain name system, naming conventions, computer
+   administration, computer network management
+
+Introduction
+
+   As soon as you deal with more than one computer, you need to
+   distinguish between them.  For example, to tell your system
+   administrator that your computer is busted, you might say, "Hey Ken.
+   Goon is down!"
+
+   Computers also have to be able to distinguish between themselves.
+   Thus, when sending mail to a colleague at another computer, you might
+   use the command "mail libes@goon".
+
+   In both cases, "goon" refers to a particular computer.  How the name
+   is actually dereferenced by a human or computer need not concern us
+   here.  This essay is only concerned with choosing a "good" name.  (It
+   is assumed that the reader has a basic understanding of the domain
+   name system as described by [2].)
+
+   By picking a "good" name for your computer, you can avoid a number of
+   problems that people stumble over again and again.
+
+   Here are some guidelines on what NOT to do.
+
+
+
+
+Libes                                                           [Page 1]
+
+RFC 1178                   Name Your Computer                August 1990
+
+
+      Don't overload other terms already in common use.
+
+         Using a word that has strong semantic implications in the
+         current context will cause confusion.  This is especially true
+         in conversation where punctuation is not obvious and grammar is
+         often incorrect.
+
+         For example, a distributed database had been built on top of
+         several computers.  Each one had a different name.  One machine
+         was named "up", as it was the only one that accepted updates.
+         Conversations would sound like this: "Is up down?"  and "Boot
+         the machine up." followed by "Which machine?"
+
+         While it didn't take long to catch on and get used to this
+         zaniness, it was annoying when occasionally your mind would
+         stumble, and you would have to stop and think about each word
+         in a sentence.  It is as if, all of a sudden, English has
+         become a foreign language.
+
+      Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine.
+
+         A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was
+         going to be used to control a number of machines on a shop
+         floor.  A while later, a new machine was acquired to help with
+         some of the processing.  Needless to say, it couldn't be called
+         "shop" as well.  Indeed, both machines ended up performing more
+         specific tasks, allowing more precision in naming.  A year
+         later, five new machines were installed and the original one
+         was moved to an unrelated project.  It is simply impossible to
+         choose generic names that remain appropriate for very long.
+
+         Of course, they could have called the second one "shop2" and so
+         on.  But then one is really only distinguishing machines by
+         their number.  You might as well just call them "1", "2", and
+         "3".  The only time this kind of naming scheme is appropriate
+         is when you have a lot of machines and there are no reasons for
+         any human to distinguish between them.  For example, a master
+         computer might be controlling an array of one hundred
+         computers.  In this case, it makes sense to refer to them with
+         the array indices.
+
+         While computers aren't quite analogous to people, their names
+         are.  Nobody expects to learn much about a person by their
+         name.  Just because a person is named "Don" doesn't mean he is
+         the ruler of the world (despite what the "Choosing a Name for
+         your Baby" books say).  In reality, names are just arbitrary
+         tags.  You cannot tell what a person does for a living, what
+         their hobbies are, and so on.
+
+
+
+Libes                                                           [Page 2]
+
+RFC 1178                   Name Your Computer                August 1990
+
+
+      Don't use your own name.
+
+         Even if a computer is sitting on your desktop, it is a mistake
+         to name it after yourself.  This is another case of
+         overloading, in which statements become ambiguous.  Does "give
+         the disk drive to don" refer to a person or computer?
+
+         Even using your initials (or some other moniker) is
+         unsatisfactory.  What happens if I get a different machine
+         after a year?  Someone else gets stuck with "don" and I end up
+         living with "jim".  The machines can be renamed, but that is
+         excess work and besides, a program that used a special
+         peripheral or database on "don" would start failing when it
+         wasn't found on the "new don".
+
+         It is especially tempting to name your first computer after
+         yourself, but think about it.  Do you name any of your other
+         possessions after yourself?  No.  Your dog has its own name, as
+         do your children.  If you are one of those who feel so inclined
+         to name your car and other objects, you certainly don't reuse
+         your own name.  Otherwise you would have a great deal of
+         trouble distinguishing between them in speech.
+
+         For the same reason, it follows that naming your computer the
+         same thing as your car or another possession is a mistake.
+
+      Don't use long names.
+
+         This is hard to quantify, but experience has shown that names
+         longer than eight characters simply annoy people.
+
+         Most systems will allow prespecified abbreviations, but why not
+         choose a name that you don't have to abbreviate to begin with?
+         This removes any chance of confusion.
+
+      Avoid alternate spellings.
+
+         Once we called a machine "czek".  In discussion, people
+         continually thought we were talking about a machine called
+         "check".  Indeed, "czek" isn't even a word (although "Czech"
+         is).
+
+         Purposely incorrect (but cute) spellings also tend to annoy a
+         large subset of people.  Also, people who have learned English
+         as a second language often question their own knowledge upon
+         seeing a word that they know but spelled differently.  ("I
+         guess I've always been spelling "funxion" incorrectly.  How
+         embarrassing!")
+
+
+
+Libes                                                           [Page 3]
+
+RFC 1178                   Name Your Computer                August 1990
+
+
+         By now you may be saying to yourself, "This is all very
+         silly...people who have to know how to spell a name will learn
+         it and that's that." While it is true that some people will
+         learn the spelling, it will eventually cause problems
+         somewhere.
+
+         For example, one day a machine named "pythagoris" (sic) went
+         awry and began sending a tremendous number of messages to the
+         site administrator's computer.  The administrator, who wasn't a
+         very good speller to begin with, had never seen this machine
+         before (someone else had set it up and named it), but he had to
+         deal with it since it was clogging up the network as well as
+         bogging down his own machine which was logging all the errors.
+         Needless to say, he had to look it up every time he needed to
+         spell "pythagoris".  (He suspected there was an abbreviation,
+         but he would have had to log into yet another computer (the
+         local nameserver) to find out and the network was too jammed to
+         waste time doing that.)
+
+      Avoid domain names.
+
+         For technical reasons, domain names should be avoided.  In
+         particular, name resolution of non-absolute hostnames is
+         problematic.  Resolvers will check names against domains before
+         checking them against hostnames.  But we have seen instances of
+         mailers that refuse to treat single token names as domains.
+         For example, assume that you mail to "libes@rutgers" from
+         yale.edu.  Depending upon the implementation, the mail may go
+         to rutgers.edu or rutgers.yale.edu (assuming both exist).
+
+      Avoid domain-like names.
+
+         Domain names are either organizational (e.g., cia.gov) or
+         geographical (e.g., dallas.tx.us).  Using anything like these
+         tends to imply some connection.  For example, the name "tahiti"
+         sounds like it means you are located there.  This is confusing
+         if it is really somewhere else (e.g., "tahiti.cia.gov is
+         located in Langley, Virginia?  I thought it was the CIA's
+         Tahiti office!").  If it really is located there, the name
+         implies that it is the only computer there.  If this isn't
+         wrong now, it inevitably will be.
+
+         There are some organizational and geographical names that work
+         fine.  These are exactly the ones that do not function well as
+         domain names.  For example, amorphous names such as rivers,
+         mythological places and other impossibilities are very
+         suitable.  ("earth" is not yet a domain name.)
+
+
+
+
+Libes                                                           [Page 4]
+
+RFC 1178                   Name Your Computer                August 1990
+
+
+      Don't use antagonistic or otherwise embarrassing names.
+
+         Words like "moron" or "twit" are good names if no one else is
+         going to see them.  But if you ever give someone a demo on your
+         machine, you may find that they are distracted by seeing a
+         nasty word on your screen.  (Maybe their spouse called them
+         that this morning.)  Why bother taking the chance that they
+         will be turned off by something completely irrelevant to your
+         demo.
+
+      Don't use digits at the beginning of the name.
+
+         Many programs accept a numerical internet address as well as a
+         name.  Unfortunately, some programs do not correctly
+         distinguish between the two and may be fooled, for example, by
+         a string beginning with a decimal digit.
+
+         Names consisting entirely of hexadecimal digits, such as
+         "beef", are also problematic, since they can be interpreted
+         entirely as hexadecimal numbers as well as alphabetic strings.
+
+      Don't use non-alphanumeric characters in a name.
+
+         Your own computer may handle punctuation or control characters
+         in a name, but most others do not.  If you ever expect to
+         connect your computer to a heterogeneous network, you can count
+         on a variety of interpretations of non-alphanumeric characters
+         in names.  Network conventions on this are surprisingly
+         nonstandard.
+
+      Don't expect case to be preserved.
+
+         Upper and lowercase characters look the same to a great deal of
+         internet software, often under the assumption that it is doing
+         you a favor.  It may seem appropriate to capitalize a name the
+         same way you might do it in English, but convention dictates
+         that computer names appear all lowercase.  (And it saves
+         holding down the shift key.)
+
+   Now that we've heard what not to do, here are some suggestions on
+   names that work well.
+
+      Use words/names that are rarely used.
+
+         While a word like "typical" or "up" (see above) isn't computer
+         jargon, it is just too likely to arise in discussion and throw
+         off one's concentration while determining the correct referent.
+         Instead, use words like "lurch" or "squire" which are unlikely
+
+
+
+Libes                                                           [Page 5]
+
+RFC 1178                   Name Your Computer                August 1990
+
+
+         to cause any confusion.
+
+         You might feel it is safe to use the name "jose" just because
+         no one is named that in your group, but you will have a problem
+         if you should happen to hire Jose.  A name like "sphinx" will
+         be less likely to conflict with new hires.
+
+      Use theme names.
+
+         Naming groups of machines in a common way is very popular, and
+         enhances communality while displaying depth of knowledge as
+         well as imagination.  A simple example is to use colors, such
+         as "red" and "blue".  Personality can be injected by choices
+         such as "aqua" and "crimson".
+
+         Certain sets are finite, such as the seven dwarfs.  When you
+         order your first seven computers, keep in mind that you will
+         probably get more next year.  Colors will never run out.
+
+         Some more suggestions are: mythical places (e.g., Midgard,
+         Styx, Paradise), mythical people (e.g., Procne, Tereus, Zeus),
+         killers (e.g., Cain, Burr, Boleyn), babies (e.g., colt, puppy,
+         tadpole, elver), collectives (e.g., passel, plague, bevy,
+         covey), elements (e.g., helium, argon, zinc), flowers (e.g.,
+         tulip, peony, lilac, arbutus).  Get the idea?
+
+      Use real words.
+
+         Random strings are inappropriate for the same reason that they
+         are so useful for passwords.  They are hard to remember.  Use
+         real words.
+
+      Don't worry about reusing someone else's hostname.
+
+         Extremely well-known hostnames such as "sri-nic" and "uunet"
+         should be avoided since they are understood in conversation as
+         absolute addresses even without a domain.  In all other cases,
+         the local domain is assumed to qualify single-part hostnames.
+         This is similar to the way phone numbers are qualified by an
+         area code when dialed from another area.
+
+         In other words, if you have choosen a reasonable name, you do
+         not have to worry that it has already been used in another
+         domain.  The number of hosts in a bottom-level domain is small,
+         so it shouldn't be hard to pick a name unique only to that
+         domain.
+
+
+
+
+
+Libes                                                           [Page 6]
+
+RFC 1178                   Name Your Computer                August 1990
+
+
+      There is always room for an exception.
+
+         I don't think any explanation is needed here.  However, let me
+         add that if you later decide to change a name (to something
+         sensible like you should have chosen in the first place), you
+         are going to be amazed at the amount of pain awaiting you.  No
+         matter how easy the manuals suggest it is to change a name, you
+         will find that lots of obscure software has rapidly accumulated
+         which refers to that computer using that now-ugly name.  It all
+         has to be found and changed.  People mailing to you from other
+         sites have to be told.  And you will have to remember that
+         names on old backup media labels correspond to different names.
+
+         I could go on but it would be easier just to forget this
+         guideline exists.
+
+Conclusion
+
+   Most people don't have the opportunity to name more than one or two
+   computers, while site administrators name large numbers of them.  By
+   choosing a name wisely, both user and administrator will have an
+   easier time of remembering, discussing and typing the names of their
+   computers.
+
+   I have tried to formalize useful guidelines for naming computers,
+   along with plenty of examples to make my points obvious.  Having been
+   both a user and site administrator, many of these anecdotes come from
+   real experiences which I have no desire to relive.  Hopefully, you
+   will avoid all of the pitfalls I have discussed by choosing your
+   computer's name wisely.
+
+Credits
+
+   Thanks to the following people for suggesting some of these
+   guidelines and participating in numerous discussions on computer
+   naming: Ed Barkmeyer, Peter Brown, Chuck Hedrick, Ken Manheimer, and
+   Scott Paisley.
+
+   This essay first appeared in the Communications of the ACM, November,
+   1989, along with a Gary Larson cartoon reprinted with permission of
+   United Press Syndicate.  The text is not subject to copyright, since
+   it is work of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
+   However, the author, CACM, and NIST request that this credit appear
+   with the article whenever it is reprinted.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Libes                                                           [Page 7]
+
+RFC 1178                   Name Your Computer                August 1990
+
+
+References
+
+   [1]  Libes, D., "Choosing a Name for Your Computer", Communications
+   of the ACM, Vol. 32, No. 11, Pg. 1289, November 1989.
+
+   [2]  Mockapetris, P., "Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities",
+   RFC 1034, USC/Information Sciences Institute, November 1987.
+
+Security Considerations
+
+   Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
+
+Author's Address
+
+   Don Libes
+   Integrated Systems Group
+   National Institute of Standards and Technology
+   Gaithersburg, MD 20899
+
+   Phone: (301) 975-3535
+
+   EMail:  libes@cme.nist.gov
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+Libes                                                           [Page 8]
+
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