How do you choose the hostnames for your systems ?
Do you use generic names like
"YOURNAMEHERE-computer" or a actual, more personal, name ?

I always name my laptop "ember" and my desktop "cinder".

I name them after mountains. If they're cloud-based, and/or virtual, I name them after fictional mountains.

I name them after the first thing I see. One of them is ammobox, another one is fieldjacket.

My laptop is a ThinkPad W530, so I named it W530

I have:

Workstation
Devbook
Music book

Timekeeper (my watch)
Internet addiction (my phone)

@Linux, showing some real creativity there.

I name mine after stuff from science fiction
So my main laptop is Trantor, and I named my VPS Stratos.

@metamourge are ember and cinder Dark Souls references, by any chance?

I've named mine 'null' or 'nullify' or 'john@lemon' (a pun about John Lennon)

Ataraxy (phone)
Alacrity (computer)

I have Derelict, Ivlivs, SOMOS, Dmitriy, Nero, Walter... I don't really have a naming scheme.

@Linux I can't even hope to be such a genius.

At home, servers are named after planets. It’s clients are named after the planet’s moons.

In my study group at university we name them after Tolkien. So far we have four servers: Smaug, Durin, Balin and Azog

Gems.
Always gems.
(Precious and otherwise, I'm not picky)

In no particular order:
Jade, Sapphire, Talasite, Beryl, Peridot, Lapis ...

I used to name them after Disney characters, but then the number of servers at home increased so I never could remeber which one did what. So now they are named after functions. db01, db02, web01, web02 and so on.

@RememberMe
Actually yes.
I started with this naming-scheme, after I started to play DS again.

Color hues, tints and shades for servers, flowers for workstations (desktop or laptop).
My current windows machine is daisy, my Ubuntu one is orchid.
For this new project I have aqua, citrine and crimson as servers.

I use michael-machinetype-whatitdoes (for desktops and multi-purpose servers I throw out last section), but might be looking for naming my computers with random words for bad weather conditions + prefixes

My main one is AlephNull, my crappy laptop is Alpha.

@Root ooh, I used to name stuff after rocks and minerals earlier. Half of them would end up being gems anyway because they look fantastic in most rocks and minerals books.
But still, it's nice having a laptop called Basalt and a phone named Feldspar (could be because they were both pretty pedestrian, heh)

I call mine based on monsters in greek mythology

Computer is Cerberus because multi-boot
Laptop is Orthrus because it's his brother :D

I feel horribly uncreative 🙂
I'd probably change the phone name to "venom"
And the laptop hostname to "ceeborg"
And I have never seen or read a single shit by Marvel 🙂 these are just coincidentally Marvel character based.

ALWAYS be creative. My laptop is "FBI-VAN" (because I use it for pentesting and coding) and my desktop is "DAM-KILLER" (holy FUCK my desktop eats wattage... not even new parts or water cooled or running full-time or anything... not even that good compared to new hardware.)