Naming Conventions
Yesterday I pointed to a list of IKEA Naming Conventions, revealing the logic behind how they've named their products. In my life, the main families of items I see named are computers (generally, servers). At my office, we name the servers after sushi -- so you have otoro, hamachi, maguro, and so on. At web hosting company Pair, servers are named for the phonetic spelling of alphabet letters (including common alphabets like Greek and obscure stuff like Ogham -- shown in the photo to the right) -- so you get pi, rho, upsilon; and beith, nuin, huath. Ubuntu Linux releases are named with alliterative monikers like "Breezy Badger," "Dapper Drake," and "Gutsy Gibbon." At college, I interned in an office where the computers were named after Simpsons characters (my machine was "Itchy").
But it's not just about naming computers. When my childhood cat Raisin had kittens, we named them after various royal positions: Duke, Duchess, Prince, Princess, etc. Radio call signs are based on alphanumeric conventions. Planets have a shockingly rigorous naming convention. Even ancient Roman names follow a naming convention.
So let's have it -- what naming conventions have you come across? I'm particularly curious about children named according to a convention (my parents seemed to go for saint names, so my brother and I are Michael and Christopher...though I guess Michael is technically an archangel).
(Idea via Lyza Danger Gardner.)