--hostname is a parameter which can be given along with docker run command which will set the specified name as containers hostname whereas --ip is parameter to set specific ip address(ipv4) to that particular container.
docker run --hostname test --ip 10.1.2.3 ubuntu:14.04
The following command will create a docker container with base image as ubuntu-14.04 with hostname as test and container ip address as 10.1.2.3
The --hostname flag only changes the hostname inside your container. This may be needed if your application expects a specific value for the hostname. It does not change DNS outside of docker, nor does it change the networking isolation, so it will not allow others to connect to the container with that name.
You can use the container name or the container's (short, 12 character) id to connect from container to container with docker's embedded dns as long as you have both containers on the same network and that network is not the default bridge.
This is not a direct answer, I just want to summarise something that is not immediately clear.
To get containers to talk to each other,
Create a non default network:
docker network create MyNetwork
Connect containers to this network at run time:
docker run --network MyNetwork --name Container1 Image1
docker run --network MyNetwork --name Container2 Image2
Now, if Container1 is for example a web server running on port 80, Processes inside Container2 will be able to resolve it using a host name of Container1 and port 80
Further if Container1 is set up like this:
docker run --network MyNetwork --name Container1 -p 8080:80 Image1