Can I change names of network interfaces arbitrary?

Question

I have installed OpenWRT on VirtualBox.

There are four interfaces:

• br-lan
• eth0
• eth1
• lo

Why do they call that way? Are they variables? Can I name them arbitrary?

• foo-bar
• xyz0
• xyz1
• bo

Like so:

config interface 'wan'
    option proto 'dhcp'
    option ifname 'xyz1' # it is 'eth1' here by default

Answer 1

Sure, you can name them whatever you like. You might take a look here or here