Originally Posted by Martian

That's not quite the whole story.

The idea of naming computers goes back to the first networks. Back in the days before DNS, all of the hosts and their locations were stored in a list called a hosts file. This existed as a way for people to access different hosts on the network, by mapping names to IP addresses. Just like people can't remember IP addresses very well, people also have a hard time keeping things like IBM-37C08 straight too, so the hosts were given names that were easy to remember.

It still serves a function in large scale networking operations, but naming your local PC's is just the geek tradition that arose from the old way of doing things.

This box is named Lucy and the one in the other room is Rita. I have a cookie for anyone who can guess the origin.