Who created Name Your PC Day?

No founder and no founding year are documented for it. A 2023 abc27 feature that went looking could not establish where the day began.

Is Name Your PC Day the same as National Name Your Car Day?

No, they are separate observances on separate dates. Name Your PC Day is November 20 and National Name Your Car Day is October 2.

Does my computer already have a name?

Yes, though you almost certainly did not pick it. The name it shipped with is there to give it an identity on a network, which is why it rarely looks like a word.

Name Your PC Day

Next celebratedFriday, November 20, 2026

Every computer arrives already named, usually a run of letters and numbers rather than a word. Name Your PC Day is for overwriting that with something you would actually say out loud.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATENovember 20

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYTech

SUBCATEGORYGadgets

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A reporter went looking and came back empty.

No founder and no founding year for Name Your PC Day are documented. A newsroom feature that went looking for its origin reported that the starting point remains elusive.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday

INTRO

Fifteen characters, and the sixteenth was never yours

Name Your PC Day arrives on November 20 with a strange little constraint attached. Windows will not accept a computer name longer than 15 characters. That is not a round number somebody liked.

It comes from a protocol published in 1987, which fixed a NetBIOS name at exactly 16 bytes. Microsoft reserves the sixteenth character to identify what the machine actually does on the network.

So 15 characters are yours and the sixteenth never was. That is the entire budget for whatever you decide to call the thing you stare at all day.

ORIGINS

Name Your PC Day history

INTRODUCTION

In the late 1980s a researcher in the Integrated Systems Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology sat down to write about something nobody had treated as a problem. His name was Don Libes. His subject was what to call a computer.

He thanked five colleagues for the discussions behind it, among them Ed Barkmeyer and Chuck Hedrick. What they produced was a list of things not to do, and a shorter list of things that work.

CHAPTER 01

The machine called up

One team named a machine up, because it was the only one on the network that accepted updates. Then the sentences started. Libes recorded colleagues asking one another, "Is up down?"

The rule he drew from it was blunt. Do not give a computer a name that people already say out loud. He extended it to your own name too, since a request to give the disk drive to don stops meaning one thing.

CHAPTER 02

From a magazine page to a standards document

The essay first ran in Communications of the ACM in November 1989. Ten months later the IETF republished it as RFC 1178.

That is an unusual journey for a magazine column. It placed a federal agency's advice about naming your desktop into the same numbered series as the protocols the desktop runs on.

CHAPTER 03

A day with no author

Name Your PC Day has no comparable paper trail. An independent blogger was already keeping it on November 19, 2012, and WTVY in Dothan, Alabama was marking it by 2018.

In 2023 the abc27 reporter David Tristan set out to find who had started it. He wrote that the origin point remains elusive, and offered a guess: maybe nobody wants to take credit for it.

TIMELINE

Timeline

A letter must come first

RFC 952 set out the host name syntax for the DoD internet host table and required an alphabetic first character.

DNS becomes the naming standard

RFC 1035 defined how names are structured and resolved, and it is also numbered STD 13.

The letter-first rule is lifted

RFC 1123 relaxed the restriction so that a host name could begin with either a letter or a digit.

An essay on naming appears

Don Libes published Choosing a Name for Your Computer in Communications of the ACM.

The essay becomes an RFC

The IETF republished it as RFC 1178 and gave it a second number, FYI 5.

The earliest citable observance

An independent blogger wrote up Name Your PC Day for the following November 20.

BY THE NUMBERS

Name Your PC Day by the Numbers

63: DNS label, maximum octets
255: Full DNS name, maximum octets
24: Host name ceiling set in 1985
2,512: Words in the IETF naming guide

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about Name Your PC Day

The guidance carries no copyright at all

The text is not subject to copyright, because it is work of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Its original printing appeared alongside a Gary Larson cartoon, reprinted with permission of United Press Syndicate.

The IETF once published a poem about this

RFC 2100, The Naming of Hosts, appeared on April 1, 1997. It parodies T. S. Eliot and insists that a host must have three different names.

Your machine's name is lowercase and uppercase at once

RFC 1178 states that convention dictates computer names appear all lowercase. Microsoft's own documentation says Windows uses only uppercase NetBIOS names.

A misspelled machine name once jammed a network

RFC 1178 describes a machine called pythagoris, misspelled, that began sending a tremendous number of messages to its administrator and clogging up the network. He had never seen it before and had to look the name up every time he needed to spell it.

One reporter could find no equivalent day for phones

Checking whether naming days existed for Apple computers, Chromebooks, tablets or cell phones, abc27's David Tristan reported every one of them unfound in his searches.

Experience has shown that names longer than eight characters simply annoy people.

Don LibesNational Institute of Standards and Technology

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love Name Your PC Day

IDENTITY

Every machine ships with a name. You did not choose it.

Naming a computer and renaming one are different acts. Every machine leaves the factory with an identifier built to pick it out on a network, and it is usually a mix of letters and numbers rather than a word.

PRACTICE

Fleet naming is an operational discipline

Libes wrote for people running many machines at once, and told them to name those machines in themed sets. He warned that finite sets run out, since the seven dwarfs stop at seven while colors never do.

LONGEVITY

The advice has outlasted the machinery

The RFC index lists no obsoleting or updating document for RFC 1178, thirty-six years after it appeared. The DNS specification it sits above has been updated by twenty-nine later RFCs.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate Name Your PC Day

Check the name your computer already answers to

Open your system settings and read the device name it shipped with. You cannot replace a name until you know what it currently is.

BORROW

Borrow a name from computing history

Computing history supplies plenty of candidates, from Ada Lovelace to Grace Hopper. Pick one whose work matches whatever you actually use the machine for.

READ

Read the guide a federal agency wrote

RFC 1178 runs to eight pages and is free to read in full. Read it before you rename anything, not afterwards.

SAY

Say the name out loud before committing

A name that doubles as an ordinary word turns simple sentences into guesswork. Test yours in a spoken sentence before it goes anywhere near a settings panel.

KEEP

Keep the name inside fifteen characters

Count the letters before you get attached to anything, because a longer one will simply bounce. Fifteen is fewer than it looks once you start typing.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know Name Your PC Day?

1 / 8

What is the maximum length of a Windows computer name?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance and a normal working day, and the Federal Register carries no document naming it.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

14sources

10primary records

8independently dated

Primary records

RFC EditorAugust 1990

RFC 1178: Choosing a Name for Your Computer (FYI 5)

Don Libes's eight-page guide, written at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, on what to call a computer and what not to. It carries the eight-character guidance, the machine named up, the warning that finite naming sets run out, the all-lowercase convention, and the note that the text is not under copyright.

View source

RFC EditorMarch 1987

RFC 1001: Protocol Standard for a NetBIOS Service on a TCP/UDP Transport (STD 19)

The NetBIOS-over-TCP standard, whose section 14 fixes a NetBIOS name at exactly 16 bytes across the client interface. That 16-byte field is the space a Windows computer name occupies.

View source

RFC EditorNovember 1987

RFC 1035: Domain Names, Implementation and Specification (STD 13)

The core DNS specification. Its size-limits section caps a label at 63 octets and a whole name at 255 octets, which are the outer bounds on any name a machine answers to.

View source

RFC EditorOctober 1985

RFC 952: DoD Internet Host Table Specification

The 1985 host-name rulebook, written by three authors credited to SRI. It capped a name at 24 characters and required the first character to be alphabetic.

View source

RFC EditorOctober 1989

RFC 1123: Requirements for Internet Hosts, Application and Support

The document that formally relaxed RFC 952's first-character rule so a host name could begin with a letter or a digit, and required host software to handle names of up to 63 characters.

View source

RFC EditorApril 1, 1997

RFC 2100: The Naming of Hosts

The IETF's April Fools' Day poem on the difficulty of choosing a hostname, parodying T. S. Eliot and insisting that a host must have three different names.

View source

IETF Datatracker

Document record for RFC 1178

The machine-readable record for RFC 1178, giving its length as eight pages and 2,512 words and confirming that it is also numbered FYI 5.

View source

RFC Editor

RFC Index

The master index recording every RFC's status and amendment history. It shows RFC 1178 with no obsoleting or updating document, while RFC 1035 carries a list of twenty-nine later RFCs that update it.

View source

Microsoft Learn

Naming conventions in Active Directory for computers, domains, sites, and OUs

Microsoft's own limits on what a Windows machine may be called. It gives the 15-character maximum, states that Windows does not permit longer names, reserves the 16th character for identifying the device's function, and notes that Windows uses only uppercase NetBIOS names.

View source

Federal Register

Documents API, exact-phrase search for Name Your PC Day

The US government's daily journal returns zero documents containing the phrase Name Your PC Day.

View source

Additional coverage

abc27November 20, 2023

What's in a name? Nov. 20 is Name Your PC Day

A newsroom feature by David Tristan reporting that the day's origin point remains elusive. It also records his unsuccessful search for equivalent naming days covering Apple computers, Chromebooks, tablets and cell phones, and distinguishes naming a computer from renaming one.

View source

WTVY

November 20th is Name Your PC Day

A local television station in Dothan, Alabama marking the day and inviting viewers to name their computers. An Internet Archive capture dates it to November 20, 2018.

View source

A Year of HolidaysNovember 19, 2012

November 20: Name Your PC Day

The earliest citable record of an individual keeping the day, written the evening before and recalling a first computer that had been named Manfred.

View source

Grassroots Motorsports

How are you celebrating National Name Your Car Day?

A motoring magazine's coverage establishing that National Name Your Car Day falls on October 2, used here to separate it from Name Your PC Day.

View source

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