Pi-Hole reports wrong name for local network devices (specifically Pi-Hole host itself defined in /etc/hosts)

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So then why do I only see the HOSTNAME.photosync all over the Pi-hole web interface?

Exactly. Like I mentioned with the crazy iPad hostname few posts earlier. The downside is: that way I'd need to set static IPs for (all my (sick in terms of hostname presentation is faulty in Pi-hole)) clients and manually maintain https://pi.hole/admin/settings/dnsrecords - which is a bit overkill with all that manual maintenance. I'm doing this for certain hosts (mainly server/infrastructure/IoT devices), but clients always were fine until 2025. I really don't want to teach Pi-hole manually (to override its own freaky source for hostnames ^^) what my router already knows.

Another random example:

nslookup [IP-of-another-client] pi.hole
Server:  pi.hole
Address:  xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Name:    amazon-XXXXXXXXX.fritz.box
Address:  xxx.xxx.x.xx


nslookup [IP-of-another-client] fritz.box
Server:  fritz.box
Address:  xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Name:    Shelly-Hostname-Just-Fine-As-Configured-In-Router.fritz.box
Address:  xxx.xxx.x.xx

Or this one

nslookup [IP-of-another-client] pi.hole
Server:  pi.hole
Address:  xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Name:    xn--shelly-hostname-ab-room-function-ohd.fritz.box # absolutely no freaking idea where "xn--" and "-ohd" is coming from (the other parts are mainly matching the actual hostname)
Address:  xxx.xxx.x.xx


nslookup [IP-of-another-client] fritz.box
Server:  fritz.box
Address:  xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Name:    Shelly-Hostname-Also-Just-Fine-As-Configured-In-Router.fritz.box
Address:  xxx.xxx.x.xx

So a shelly device has pretty much nothing in common with Amazon devices. And the second example... zero idea where that creative hostname is coming from.

Edit: I think it's the FRITZ!Box router which seems to maintain some kind of history of previous hostnames.

  • Doing the nslookup [ip-of-devices] pi.hole|fritz.box on the Pi-hole server I get responses with partly 4 hostnames where only one is the correct, final one - while the other 3 are historic or crazy.
  • Interestingly (and if relevant at all), nslookup [ip-of-devices] fritz.box always has the correct (currently set, final/last) hostname in the first line, while nslookup [ip-of-devices] pi.hole has exactly NOT that line at first but chooses one of the crazy or historic ones.

So why does
a) FRITZ! not trash out those old hostnames but still serve them?
b) Pi-Hole pick the wrong responses for many hostnames?

Overall for a minority (but a very annoying one) of hostnames I simply can't trust Pi-hole's web interface.