I've heard the "cattle not pets" argument for servers, but I hate that. Naming a server is like naming a boat. I've done it where everything is named after astronomers, or physicists, or even comic strip characters, but I also like it when a server is named, well, with a name.
"Hey guys, Jeff is throwing errors again, need somebody to find out what Jeff's problem is."
It depends on scale. If you have 3 servers that you manage individually, you name them like pets. If you have 3,000 servers that you manage through automation, you enumerate them like cattle.
Sure, I get that. Not many do that, but they still name their handful of servers "EDG-12-XY-NY-001-WTF". When it would be so much better if it were named "Doug".
"Hey guys, Jeff is throwing errors again, need somebody to find out what Jeff's problem is."