How wild is your approach to device naming?

By Cobbler, 28 June, 2022

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Listening to a recent podcast highlighted just how unimaginative I am when it comes to naming my Apple devices... essentially leaving the name to whatever the OS has decided. Consequently, it's typically “Cobbler's iPhone 12” etc.

I now know that there's a whole Brave World out there of fun, crazy, and esoteric device naming.

Anyone here do anything different with device names?? 🤔

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By Shass on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

My fiancé and I name our devices after Pokémon. :) Not our iphones, though. But the computers have pokémon names: Dragonite, Eevee, Gyarados, Phanpy...

My dad used to give his computers names from Norse mythology: Oden, Ymer, Sleipner, Balder etc.

A friend of mine goes for Swedish female authors: Selma, Elsa, Astrid and so on.

We're not very extravagant, but at least we have themes going. :)

By Brian Giles on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

When I lived on campus in college I discovered networked shared computers. One of the guys on my floor had shared folders on his desktop and laptop that he named "blackbox" and "blacknote" respectively. The desktop had a huge 30GB-ish library of music and TV shows which was mind-blowing at the time. I loved browsing through and streaming all that music he had on there and it always bummed me out when his computer wasn't on. lol

Sometime in early 2004 I went to a party and saw an iPod for the first time -- a 3rd gen 40GB one. It blew my mind that my buddy could have put his entire shared music collection on that iPod with room to spare. So when I got my 5th gen iPod for Christmas in 2005, I decided to name it "blackbox pocket" because I could have a collection like my college buddy that I could take everywhere.

Ah... good times!

By Siobhan on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

Minors and all that, but I guarantee, either someone will chuckle, or be grossed out. Either way, it's a win for me.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

I give most of my devices mundaine names to make it obvious which is which, but if I'm playing a game like Stardew Valley, I go a little wild: ponies, pokemon, restaurants, videogame characters, things I can't say here. I tend to be the most creative when naming my instruments in Logic Pro. A lot of them end up being called some form of"thingie" or "cajigger" because of the abstract nature of a lot of the synth sounds I use.

By Kevin Shaw on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

At home: Aquarius, Libra, Gemini…
My wi-fi network was called WhenDovesCry

At my old work, we had Jem, Aja, Kimber, Shana and Synergy. Any 80s cartoon fan will get this reference.

By techluver on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

For some reason, my dad had the nickname codemonkey when he started working. So all of our iPhones became all kinds of monkey names. For example, I'm world monkey because I love studying foreign languages.

By Faerie on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

My wifi's name is Castle Cloud, both as a nod to the musical song and because its pretty. I'm still trying to think of good names for my phone and computer, though. Something to do with libraries or fantasy/fairy tales, I think.

By wiljames on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

My iDevices are William's whatever and Denise's is Denise's whatever. However, we had to give our Roombas something completely different.

We have an upstairs and downstairs Roomba. the downstairs one does mainly tile flooring, so he is called Little Fucker. Upstairs is all carpet and ht's bigger and auto-empties. Yes, you guessed it right, he is Big fucker. The Amazon devices are fun to try to start up the devices. 😂🤣

By Dawn 👩🏻‍🦯 on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

I'm like you. I think mostly because I have only 1 Ipad. But, you're tempting me! :-) Also, I've always been afraid that changing the device name would cause problems with Bluetooth, and networks and such.
One of my nieghbor's however... that's a whole other ball game! Their wifi network is named FBI surveillance, and the guest network is FBI Guest.
My brother came to town for something a while back. And he was trying to get his phone and laptop connected to our network. I was in the kitchen getting something to eat, when all of a su.en, I heard a "Woe!" along with a few other shocked and surprised choice words coming from my living room. I started laughing, and went to see what was going on. And my brother said: "Uh, what with the FBI surveillance? Are the feds watching you or what?" which, just made me laugh harder. I said, "Well, I see you found the neighbor's wifi."
Now, it's a joke in my house! One th's's sure, it definitely keeps unwanted visitors off their wifi, that's sure! :-)
I'm curious, what podcast did you hear this on? NOW, you have me curious!

Of course, I've heard of people naming wifi networks, or devices after certain kinds of reapons which, I DO NOT recommend.

Also, I wonder, if you could do this with other things, like, bluetooth speakers.

By Vsevolod Popov on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

I simply called my iPhone with my short interpretation of name, because I am tired having different names of iPhones with brackets, hifens ETC. So I named my iPhone as simply my name without the word iPhone. Plus it's much easier to discover it as a wi-fi hotspot like that when connecting from Linux for example.

By Cobbler on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

Thanks for all of the great insights. I am indeed highly unimaginative 🙉

Off now to try and correct this 😀

By Scott Davert on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Well, I'm not very creative I guess. When in an environment where lots of people had iPhones and I was trying to connect a braille display that wouldn't, I renamed my phone porn browser because I couldn't think of another unique name.
Wifi networks can be fun. I, at one point, called my Wifi network Super Killer Virus, at another point it was Clever SSID because someone asked me to come up with a clever wifi name and I couldn't and it is now PrettyFly4AWifi.

By wiljames on Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 16:02

We have a few networks around here with some cool names. One person has one called GetYoOwn. We call ours MoFuggaLivesHere.

By Pax on Sunday, August 14, 2022 - 16:02

my devices have really normal names, like Pax's iPhone, Pax's MacBook, Pax's apple watch

By Siobhan on Sunday, August 14, 2022 - 16:02

I love the what the??!! when people see my wifi, or phone, or whatever. To each his own. I hear ben Stine's voice, "Anyone?" "Anyone?" Anyone...?"

By Ekaj on Sunday, August 14, 2022 - 16:02

I never even thought about renaming my Apple devices. I guess I always knew I could do it, but for some reason I just never have. So my devices are still "Jake's iPhone 7" and "Jake's MacBook Air", just like my first Mac. Perhaps when I upgrade to another iPhone I'll rename the devices though. That'd be cool.

By Daniel Angus M… on Sunday, August 14, 2022 - 16:02

For about a year, I had my own wifi network, separate from mom and dad’s. They would always watch Netflix, leaving me with not much bandwidth. So that’s why I had my own. I would always mess around with the name of my wifi, as I had an AirPort Extream. One name I gave my network was Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. I was always tinkering with some setting or another! I still have that router, as I sold it to my parents when I moved to L’Arche. I have since moved back home.

By Tyler on Sunday, August 14, 2022 - 16:02

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

While I don't name my devices or Wi-Fi network creatively, I've certainly seen some cleverly named ones, such as my own damn internet, get your own Wi-Fi, DEA surveillance van, CIA black site, and orgy over here.

By Brad on Sunday, August 14, 2022 - 16:02

I don't bother. or if i do, i might change it to brad instead of Bradley.

By Dominic on Sunday, May 14, 2023 - 16:02

My iPhone SE 2022 name is now round one! Fight. Just like Mortal Kombat.
And for my Apple Watch series 8 watch name is.
The feds are watching.
What do you guys would’ve done nickname is LOL

By Holger Fiallo on Sunday, May 14, 2023 - 16:02

OK. My window PC is a she and her name is Whitney. My iPhone, iPad or watch have no names.