On early MySQL development hostnames

While reading through the manual I ran across something I had totally forgotten about from the early MySQL days. Early on, Monty (or was it Jani?) decided to name many development servers variants of “bitch” in different languages. I have no idea what the back-story was, but maybe Monty or Jani can fill it in. All of these names live on all over the place, such as in the MySQL and InnoDB documentation, bug reports, and mailing list messages. See:

• bitch.mysql.fi — English, of course.
• hundin.mysql.fi — German
• hynda.mysql.fi — Swedish
• narttu.mysql.fi — Finnish
• tik.mysql.fi — Swedish
• tramp.mysql.fi — English, probably. Similar in meaning to some slang uses of “bitch”.

There are a few honorable mentions, which I’m not sure are variants of “bitch”, but very well could be:

• donna.mysql.fi
• mashka.mysql.fi
• mishka.mysql.fi

It’s funny to see how those names live on in “infamy” on Google. Try searching for any of them like “+mysql +hundin“.