I'm sure CloudFlare uses "boring" names internally, but I was kind of nicely surprised that their DNS nameservers are named amy.cloudflare.com, paul.cloudflare.com, etc.
For some reason it just gave me a little tiny bit of excitement to get started on their service that wouldn't have been there if they were named the standard ns1., ns2., etc., and when you're just choosing from a random pool of DNS servers it doesn't really matter what the names are from an organization standpoint.
Glad you like the non-boring names for nameservers. There's actually method to why we use them and not boring names. There are 101 of names (50 women, 51 men) all between 2 - 4 letters long (Ed, Sara, John, etc.). They actually map to globally distributed clusters of servers, so each name doesn't correspond to a physical server in a single location. Instead of mapping to a physical server, we use the unique names to help verify you are the true owner of a domain you sign up in a way that is similar to how Google Apps uses a TXT record you add to your DNS to show you own a domain.
When you sign up for CloudFlare we provide you two unique nameservers when you sign up as part of the verification process. We can tell you are the owner of the domain you're registering if you change the nameservers to the two we provide you. In that way, it adds a layer of security in case two people register the exact same domain at the same time and we can't tell who should be authoritative. We figured that it was easier to remember and not typo two names rather than two random numbers (ns23 & ns67).
We commissioned an artist to draw 101 ninjas to represent CloudFlare's "Ninja nameservers." You can read more about them on the CloudFlare blog, including links to the Facebook page with all 101 illustrations:
For some reason it just gave me a little tiny bit of excitement to get started on their service that wouldn't have been there if they were named the standard ns1., ns2., etc., and when you're just choosing from a random pool of DNS servers it doesn't really matter what the names are from an organization standpoint.