Oh interesting. I don't think we've talked about this decision publicly, so I can write about it for a second. Not letting people re-use a device name is an inconvenience, I admit, but arguably it's not like other cryptography inconveniences, where people are confused, troubled, etc. We figured people would say "huh, weird requirement" and pick a different name and move on.

The goal is a 1-1 mapping between devices (keys) and these names. So whenever we need our UX to talk about a key, it can talk, safely, about it in terms of device names. Once committed to your chain of signatures, "Laptop-Warhol" means a specific device key, and it can't be used again. So, for example, if one of your Keybase installs wants to tell you "oh, Laptop-Warhol just added a new device, iPhone-Vangogh" then it doesn't need to look like this: "Key 34858234589234895897234598734 added key 90123845890230948234234324."

If Laptop-Warhold could mean multiple devices (keys), well then we'd need to start talking about the keys. Which is a nightmare for usability.

A lot of this decision was driven by something we've seen with apple devices. Every now and then I'd get a popup on my computer - say when updating iOS - that said something like "you just started using iMessage on a new device, 'chris's iphone'. if you don't know what this you should freak your shit out." well - it has basically said that so many times with the same names over again, that I can safely assume that it's a near-useless warning.

Note I mean unique to you; 2 different users on keybase can name their devices the same.

Generally speaking...it's been a goal from the beginning that names on keybase are meaningful. Similarly if you look up "chris" in in our merkle tree (which is pinned to bitcoin) that leads to a deterministic chain of signatures. inside that chain, where I mention "work-imac-warhol", you're guaranteed to see the same answer as I am. So "chris" is as good as a key fingerprint or safety number. And so is my device name.