A couple neat things about using chemical elements as hostnames
Naming is a classic bikeshed.  Sure, a good naming system is  a good thing, and helps you recognize what box is where.  But once you hit between 20 and 200 hosts (depending on your memory)  you are going to need to stick 'em in a database and sort 'em into groups to manage them in a sane manner anyhow, and at that point, naming schemes won't mean much anyhow.<p>The problem is that as a bikeshed, /everyone/ has an opinion and everyone wants to have that opinion heard.  I've been places where we spent more effort arguing about naming schemes than it would have taken to write the database and tools for retrieving groups of hosts.<p>So generally, when this comes up in situations where I'm in charge,  I loudly declare it a bikeshed, and we choose the scheme essentially at random.