I have a desktop, a laptop and a netbook …
I name them after philosophers - Socrates, Diogenes and Plato are the current ones.
Diogenes is called that because I use my laptop in bed on a hospital table, and he lights the room at night when hubby is asleep and I am playing online or playing solitaire/bejeweled2/whatever little timewaster I am doing.
Nice!
We have always had a cheap car around for the kids to drive. Most took on some colorful nicknames. The one we have now is known by everybody as Seven Hundred Dollar Volkswagon.
Because it’s a fun outlet for creativity and imagination. Confusing the squares is a bonus. I name vehicles (The Battlewagon, Rampage), computers (Mother Box, GIR), and houses (Slackhaus, The Terrordome). Occasionally, individual rooms in the house get names (The Danger Room).
Sure, gramps. I’ll be childish. Just shuffle along to bingo now.
Our cats and dogs have names, but I frequently refer to them as “the stupid cat” or “the black dog.”
I’m not really sure. I thought women had named mine, but it turns out when they said Big Dick, they were referring to me.
The gun world has been spoken of in this thread - I will take a shot at guitars:
BB King named his guitar after a woman that a fight broke out over while he was playing. He ran back into rescue his guitar - a big investment at the time - and injured himself. He ended naming the guitar because Lucille was enough trouble to start a fire out and important enough to him to save. He has no single guitar named Lucille - any guitar he plays is referred to that way, although he is mostly associated with a specific type - a Gibson ES-355 with Varitone and often made with no f-holes to minimize feedback.
On Guitar boards, there are regular, inevitable “do u name yr gitarz??” threads. Guys line up to declare that they are too macho to do that - but then they go on to declare that they call one the “Strat” or another the “'62” or whatever, making it clear that they are investing that name with specific identity and love as a dad calling his kid “Junior” or “Boy.”
Naming a guitar is a weird thing - I have commented on this in previous guitar threads. I have tried to assign names to a variety of guitars, the vast majority of which don’t stick and I end up calling them the Strat, etc. I have one guitar that I named Gracie(link to pick) after the cat in the photo. It was the first guitar I owned that stood out as definitively special over and above being a quality build - everything came together just right. And, like that cat, if you treated it the way it wanted it purred. 
So Gracie stuck and everyone just refers to it that way without a second thought…
I can see naming plants when it comes to people who do the talking to plants thing. If you’re going to talk to your plants you might was well name your geranium “Gerry” or something.
I feel like it’s easier to either cuss or baby talk an inanimate object when it has a nickname. For example, I’m the guy in our office who unclogs the printer when some fool gets it all jammed up. It’s in my nature - and I think this is fairly common - to want to talk to it while I do so. Either, “Goddam piece of shit, work, damn you” or “come on now, print for me, you can do it” and adding a name just feels… right? That’s the only way I can express it. (Uh, the printer’'s name is Sherman. Just because.)
Everything in our house has at least a nickname. Much of our furniture that came from Ikea gets referred to by its original Ikea name, so it’s not unusual to hear statements like “It’s on the Sten.”
My Nordic Track got the name ‘Sven’ when it was delivered to my wife’s office. It came in this cardboard carton that looked like a sarcophagus - everyone was saying how it looked like a body. When my wife explained that it was a Nordic Track, ‘Sven’ was the first name that came to mind.
The guitars all have names.
I understand that there are people out there who don’t name any of their inanimate objects around the house. I just think that betrays a grey personality and a lack of imagination. 
I named my putter Charlene.
It’s called silliness. I’m a staunch proponent.
It occurs to me that this is yet another excellent dating screening tool.
Potential dateable person A to PDP B: “Does your car have a name”?
PDP B: “YAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHH” (runs screaming)
PDP A: “Next”!
Sometimes it’s easier and quicker to refer to something by a personal name, especially if there’s more than one of that item (e.g. all my guitars have names) or if the description for it is far too long (“the unit by the door, no not that one, the one on this side” became Juan). Vehicles get names because they have personalities - though my car still has the name he was given by my brother-in-law, who owned him first. I also agree with the person who said that it’s easier to cajole or curse something that has a name. Almost everything I own that has a name is male, by the way. I don’t care if it’s childish. Most people of my acquaintance at least name their cars, so I don’t feel embarrassed about it.
