I am afraid I am a party pooper in that I never find it interesting to learn how a band got their name. All of my serious boyfriends, including the one I ended up marrying, have, peculiarly, been in a band, so I have lived through endless discussions on band names. They tend to fall into one of these categories:
--We were being witty: Matt Johnson of The The named the band that because he thought bands which put a definite article in front of their name are pretentious--he decided to go them one better.
--We were being pragmatists: The Cure started out as Malice, then became The Easy Cure. The "easy" part got dropped because they were doing a gig and they didn't have enough money to pay for the extra word in their name when they went to have the flyers and banners made.
--We were being naughty: Pearl Jam is a slang term for oral sex which leads to semen.
--It simply caught our attention: Black Sabbath noticed it on a theater marquee and noticed the crowds waiting to see the flick. They were called Earth at the time, and thought maybe they'd get more attention with a "dark" name, since so many people like movies which deal with the occult. They had to write some "occult" sounding music and lyrics to go with it.
--Wow! Let's just use that!: Led Zeppelin ("that's going to go over like a lead zeppelin"); Rush (someone's brother hollering at them that they needed to rush or they weren't going to get to the gig on time); David Bowie (knew he couldn't use his real name, Jones, because of Davie Jones of The Monkees--supposedly was on the lookout for a new last name and found it when he stopped to have a smoke on a rainy day--had to step under an awning, and turned to find himself looking in the window of a cutlery store which had a display of Bowie knives--he didn't know Jim Bowie's name is pronounced "boo-ey" or he might have reconsidered); AC/DC (voltage marking, complete with the little jagged arrow, which was found on her sewing machine by Angus and Malcolm Young's sister--she brought it to their attention and they ran with it) Bad English (John Waite made a crappy shot at pool, and someone commented his "english" was bad, meaning the spin you put on a cue ball to make it go where you'd like it to after it hits your target so you can set up your next shot); and on and on and on.
There is one story I like, because it shows the band was dumb. The Doors thought they were cribbing their name from Aldous Huxley's book "The Doors of Perception." They didn't know Huxley cribbed it from William Blake :)
And then there's Berry Gordy and Motown. Supposedly, he kept a pad handy and scribbled down names and kept them around the office. When he's sign a new act, he'd have them come into the office for a meeting, and check his list of possible names, and assign one. He was open to letting the front man or woman keep his or her name, but he always wanted the rest of the band to have a catchy name beginning with "The". Most of the bands (The Supremes, The Marvels, The Temptations) just ended up being known by the "The" part, instead of including the front man or woman's name. Gordy's only interesting because he named so many bands.
**EDIT**
Wow, I should have read the answers before I wrote all that stuff down. Such is life...