--- title: What's the story behind the names of CloudFlare's name... description: Cloudflare's name servers use human first names (like bob.ns.cloudflare.com and lola.ns.cloudflare.com) instead of numbered DNS hostnames for a specific... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-behind-the-names-of-cloudflare-s-name-servers--qta8wzdcr twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: What's the story behind the names of CloudFlare's name servers? | daily.dev og:description: Cloudflare's name servers use human first names (like bob.ns.cloudflare.com and lola.ns.cloudflare.com) instead of numbered DNS hostnames for a specific... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-behind-the-names-of-cloudflare-s-name-servers--qta8wzdcr og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/qTa8WzDcr.png og:image:alt: What's the story behind the names of CloudFlare's name servers? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What's the story behind the names of CloudFlare's name servers? **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 6 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Cloudflare's name servers use human first names (like bob.ns.cloudflare.com and lola.ns.cloudflare.com) instead of numbered DNS hostnames for a specific technical reason. Early on, numbered names like dns7.cloudflare.com led users to try entering sequential names (dns3, dns4, dns5...) thinking it would add more servers, which broke the verification system. The solution was to use 100 common short names — 50 male and 50 female — creating 2,500 unique pairs that are non-sequential and harder to game. Each pair acts as a unique identifier to resolve conflicts when two users sign up the same domain simultaneously. A 101st name, 'Woz,' was later added as a tribute to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak after a ninja drawing on a Segway reminded the team of him. The names also had ninja artwork commissioned for them, and despite appearing to reference just two servers, each name actually points to hundreds of servers across Cloudflare's global network. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why does CloudFlare give customers name servers with names like bob.ns.cloudflare.com instead of dns1.cloudflare.com? CloudFlare originally used sequential names like dns1 and dns2, but users would guess and add extra sequential names (e.g. dns3, dns4, dns5) hoping to get more capacity, which broke the verification system used to resolve conflicts when two people signed up the same domain simultaneously. Switching to a pool of 100 non-sequential short names like Bob and Lola prevented this guessing while still enabling authoritative record verification. _daily.dev surfaces engineering deep dives like this for developers debugging or designing DNS infrastructure._ ### How many unique name server combinations does CloudFlare's naming system support? With 51 boy names and 50 girl names, CloudFlare's system supports 2,550 unique name server pair combinations, each customer receiving one boy name and one girl name domain. This pool size was sufficient to reliably distinguish which DNS records were authoritative even when multiple people attempted to register the same domain at the same time. _Understanding infrastructure tradeoffs like this helps engineers evaluating DNS providers on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [DNS Exists Because Nobody Can Know Every Name: Rethinking Distributed Computing \#10](https://daily.dev/posts/dns-exists-because-nobody-can-know-every-name-rethinking-distributed-computing-10-qqncwgwvr) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How CNAME Ordering in RFC Specs Caused Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 Outage](https://daily.dev/posts/how-cname-ordering-in-rfc-specs-caused-cloudflare-1-1-1-1-outage-skytaujxo) · InfoQ · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [What came first: the CNAME or the A record?](https://daily.dev/posts/what-came-first-the-cname-or-the-a-record--5wsanjo0l) · Cloudflare · 61 upvotes · 1 comments - [DNS Explained - How Domain Names Get Resolved](https://daily.dev/posts/dns-explained---how-domain-names-get-resolved-zhpljm8wy) · Hacker News · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [DNS basics and how DNS works in Neeto](https://daily.dev/posts/dns-basics-and-how-dns-works-in-neeto-pcrypngcl) · BigBinary · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#cloudflare](https://daily.dev/tags/cloudflare), [#dns](https://daily.dev/tags/dns) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-behind-the-names-of-cloudflare-s-name-servers--qta8wzdcr) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"What's the story behind the names of CloudFlare's name servers?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-behind-the-names-of-cloudflare-s-name-servers--qta8wzdcr","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-behind-the-names-of-cloudflare-s-name-servers--qta8wzdcr"},"datePublished":"2026-07-16T08:59:09.966Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T18:39:36.136Z","description":"Cloudflare's name servers use human first names (like bob.ns.cloudflare.com and lola.ns.cloudflare.com) instead of numbered DNS hostnames for a specific...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/27b70f3252c2862cdeb51d283fe3d401?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/27b70f3252c2862cdeb51d283fe3d401?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-behind-the-names-of-cloudflare-s-name-servers--qta8wzdcr","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"cloudflare,dns","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"What's the story behind the names of CloudFlare's name servers?"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-behind-the-names-of-cloudflare-s-name-servers--qta8wzdcr#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why does CloudFlare give customers name servers with names like bob.ns.cloudflare.com instead of dns1.cloudflare.com?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"CloudFlare originally used sequential names like dns1 and dns2, but users would guess and add extra sequential names (e.g. dns3, dns4, dns5) hoping to get more capacity, which broke the verification system used to resolve conflicts when two people signed up the same domain simultaneously. 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