Python thread name doesn't show up on ps or htop

When I set the name for a Python thread, it doesn't show up on htop or ps. The ps output only shows python as the thread name. Is there any way to set a thread name so that it shows up on system reports like them?

from threading import Thread
import time


def sleeper():
    while True:
        time.sleep(10)
        print "sleeping"

t = Thread(target=sleeper, name="Sleeper01")
t.start()
t.join()

ps -T -p {PID} output

  PID  SPID TTY          TIME CMD
31420 31420 pts/30   00:00:00 python
31420 31421 pts/30   00:00:00 python

First install the prctl module. (On debian/ubuntu just type sudo apt-get install python-prctl)

from threading import Thread
import time
import prctl

def sleeper():
    prctl.set_name("sleeping tiger")
    while True:
        time.sleep(10)
        print "sleeping"

t = Thread(target=sleeper, name="Sleeper01")
t.start()
t.join()

This prints

$ ps -T
  PID  SPID TTY          TIME CMD
22684 22684 pts/29   00:00:00 bash
23302 23302 pts/29   00:00:00 python
23302 23303 pts/29   00:00:00 sleeping tiger
23304 23304 pts/29   00:00:00 ps

Note: python3 users may wish to use pyprctl.

Prctl module is nice and provide many features, but depends libcap-dev package. Libcap2 is most likely installed because it is a dependency of many packages (systemd for example). So if you only need set thread name, use libcap2 over ctypes.

See improved Grief answer below.

LIB = 'libcap.so.2'
try:
    libcap = ctypes.CDLL(LIB)
except OSError:
    print(
        'Library {} not found. Unable to set thread name.'.format(LIB)
    )
else:
    def _name_hack(self):
        # PR_SET_NAME = 15
        libcap.prctl(15, self.name.encode())
        threading.Thread._bootstrap_original(self)

    threading.Thread._bootstrap_original = threading.Thread._bootstrap
    threading.Thread._bootstrap = _name_hack