Of course I give my iPods names, how else would i know which machine to load them from. I have no clue what their serial numbers are even though that info is on the same screen as the names in the Settings / About page.
I keep a cribsheet with their names (yah, and the serial#s) and the name of the machine I usually load each one from. After awhile I don't need the cribsheet to know that I load BigDog from the 15" powerbook. I'd still be trying to memorize the serial numbers, never mind which laptop each iPod gets loaded from.
Just the other day I read that because of how the human brain originally was "wired" to handle numeric concepts, and because of differences in how various languages express numbers, native English-speakers can generally only remember a string of 7 digits easily, whereas native Japanese-speakers can just as easily remember up to 11 digits.
fwiw that's why my cribsheet is organized by the NAME of my pods, not their 11-character letter/number designations.
Anyway I cannot tell you my iPods' names (i made BigDog up although I have considered that for a Classic if I cave in and get one), because that is classified information 😉