I have seen it on tons of networks- servers named “Saturn” or “Elvis” or “OptimusPrime”. In fact, one of my previous employers thought it was a good way to judge if I was competent enough by testing to make sure that I remembered what roles all of the oddly named servers hosted- when in reality, all of that time wasted trying to remember “Oh- what’s the PDCe called? Is it ‘Jones’ or ‘Robert’?” Sorry…I was too busy trying to improve your network and adhere to best practices to remember if “Elvis” was the backup server or a SQL server.
Maybe this was a trend of the early nineties – to obfuscate the hostname of every server on your network, so that just in case someone hacked into your network, he or she wouldn’t know exactly what a server called “KurtCobain” was serving – maybe it just stuck around…far far too long.
In my opinion, if a malicious hacker had enough access to your network to view hostnames, your network is boned as it is – kiss all of your data goodbye. So why not name servers something easy to remember- meaningful, and following a simple naming scheme? Why waste time and frustration in trying to come up with random names of movies, planets, or people – and then trying to remember all of them, and what service they correspond to?