What shows up on the Desktop (and what doesn't)

[fergus]

Additional to files/ folders actually located in ~/Desktop/, my Desktop
shows icons for external devices. The names allocated have evolved with time
(and through no intervention from me) from such as NONAME and NONAME_1 to
3.9G Media (and, in my case, 3.9G Media (2), since I have two identically
sized different USB drives). There are no correcsponding entries for any of
these in ~/Desktop/. I deduce that they appear by internal magic and
convention.

Can you help with any of the following:

Q1. How can  delete these from the Desktop, if I want to? 

Q2. There is no icon for the Windows hard drive, although this is mounted in
/etc/fstab exactly like all the external units. How can I get it displayed
similarly on the Desktop?

Q3. Can I rename them more descriptively? There is a rename option on
right-clicking on the icon, but in all cases this option is greyed out.

Thank you.

Fergus