On 2017-02-01 15:43, Michael Kjörling wrote:
> Short of unimaginative things like calling my home router IMP[2] or
> things like that, can anyone either suggest names with a bit of
> background (where they were, what hardware, what time period, etc.),
> or point me toward online resources where I can find lists of those?

I could drop names, but at some point the labels became quite uniform.
To illustrate that, look at the labels in an old top1000 of USENET 
sites.

http://top1000.anthologeek.net/2000/12/full.txt

They bore quickly.

The largest secondary tld nameserver ever was simply called ns 
(ns.EU.net),
I don't recall the internal hostname, but it was probably some norse
god like balder or buri.

Some stuff that randomply pops up in my mind:

- anon and penet
Reference to anon.penet.fi, early to mid '90s, a generic 386/486 box at 
Julfs house and at undisclosed locations later on.
Suitable for naming mail relays, outgoing mail servers and anonymity 
realetd services.

- kremvax
Fictional machine. Suitable for jokes, routers related to anything in 
the east.

- mcvax, mcsun
Suitable for anything related to europe.

- sunsite
A 90s thing. Suitable for sharing software, and, as a pun on Sun, java 
related stuff maybe.

- gatekeeper
Again, labels became boring, ftp.uu.net was famous as ftp site, but 
gatekeeper.dec.com had
a cool hostname.

- chronos
chronos.eu.net was a go to time server in europe, replaced by 
rolex.ripe.net.

- agate
After agate.berkeley.edu, where BSD escaped the university until the 
lawyers stepped in.