Naming Conventions: Greek Mythology
The tradition
Section titled “The tradition”TCR’s on-prem infrastructure is named after figures from Greek mythology. It’s not just decoration — the names are chosen to actually fit the role each machine plays, which makes them easier to remember and occasionally worth a smile.
Named so far
Section titled “Named so far”Daedalus
Section titled “Daedalus”The Windows Server running the Transcript App and its SQL Server instance. Daedalus was the master craftsman of Greek myth — inventor, architect, builder of things too clever for anyone else to make. Fitting for the one box in TCR’s stack that’s fully custom-built rather than a vendor product.
The Easter egg: the SQL Server instance itself is named DAEDALUS\SQLABYRINTH. In the myth, Daedalus’s most famous creation was the Labyrinth — built to hold the Minotaur, and famously difficult to navigate. A database full of merged, reconciled records from three generations of student information systems is, arguably, its own kind of labyrinth.
Perdix
Section titled “Perdix”The Ubuntu VM (on Hyper-V) running n8n. In the myth, Perdix was Daedalus’s nephew and apprentice — talented enough to invent the saw, which made Daedalus jealous enough to throw him off a cliff. Athena caught him and turned him into a partridge (perdix is Greek for partridge) before he hit the ground.
As a name for the automation server that runs alongside Daedalus, handling a huge share of what used to be manual work — it fits: a second, faster set of hands working in Daedalus’s shadow.
Not yet named
Section titled “Not yet named”-
The second on-prem server (candidate host for this documentation platform) doesn’t have a name yet. A few options that fit a knowledge/record-keeping role, in case one appeals:
- Mnemosyne — Titan goddess of memory, mother of the Muses. About as on-the-nose as it gets for a server hosting an institutional knowledge base.
- Clio — Muse of history specifically.
- Themis — goddess of divine law and order, if “policy and procedure” feels like the more fitting angle than “memory.”
This is a genuine suggestion, not a decision — whichever one (or something else entirely) actually gets used should get documented here once it’s real.
Keeping the tradition going
Section titled “Keeping the tradition going”When a new on-prem server, VM, or major piece of custom infrastructure gets stood up, consider giving it a name that fits its role the way Daedalus and Perdix do, and add it to this page. Third-party/vendor-hosted systems (Populi, Canvas, Google Workspace, etc.) don’t need this treatment — it’s specifically for infrastructure TCR builds and controls.
If future systems continue this convention, this page should stay the index of “what’s named what and why” rather than scattering the explanation across individual system pages.