Merlin Mann, some time back, linked to a geeky screed about naming your computers. I realized that despite a brief period naming my hard drives on my pre-OS X Macs, I hadn’t been doing much creatively with this.
Andy Ihnatko, I knew, kept the moniker Lillith in rotation for his main production machine. Clever enough.
I thought about the most obvious scheme–songs. But who would you have song titles that were, importantly, one-word titles, but which conveyed both seriousness of purpose with a touch of whimsy?
Rush, you say?
I concur.
Behold this list of possibilities:
- Anthem
- Bytor
- Snowdog
- Rivendell
- BastilleDay
- LakesidePark
- Necromancer
- Xanadu
- CygnusX-1
- CinderellaMan
- VillaStrangiato
- Freewill
- JacobsLadder
- NaturalScience
- TomSawyer
- RedBarchetta
- YYZ
- Limelight
- CameraEye
- Witchunt
- VitalSigns
- BroonsBane
- Subdivisions
- AnalogKid
- Chemistry
- DigitalMan
- TheWeapon
- NewWorldMan
- Countdown
- Afterimage
- RedSectorA
- BodyElectric
- KidGloves
- BigMoney
- Force10
- PrimeMover
- Presto
I CamelCased where appropriate. That’s a long list of names. You could feasibly name all of your devices Cygnus-Xx, where x is the variable, and call it a life.
But no.
The 16″ MacBook Pro I use at work is BigMoney. BigMoney is my least favorite name, so I got it over with, and it fit the model: I wouldn’t buy that much computer myself, although I am glad to have both the size and horsepower.
But my home Mac Mini? It’s Anthem. I get goosebumps when my watch unlocks it or it pops up in the AirDrop share sheet.