(1) Make it easy to spell. Eric Holle had a band called Porphyry Mountain. It's the name of a mountain out by Eagle, CO, that someone in the band liked. Wikipedia says
The term "porphyry" is from Greek and means "purple". Purple was the color of royalty, and the "Imperial Porphyry" was a deep purple igneous rock with large crystals of plagioclase. This rock was prized for various monuments and building projects in Imperial Rome and later.After seeing their name show up on flyers and club marquees for a couple of months, with what appeared to be no end of interesting, creative spellings, they changed their name to The Tractors.
(2) Put something in the name you can touch, feel, and see, so you have an image to put on web pages, flyers, and album covers. The Green Truck? Good. Visions of Happiness? Bad.
(3) Make it easy to shorten, because people will shorten it, especially if you're a success. The Rolling Stones is a good band name for a great band. Folks will ask, "Going to the Stones' concert?" and "Heard the new Stones' album?" Nicknames are natural. My uncle Julius Rahn was "J.R." If it's too hard to shorten, folks will pick a nickname over which you have no control. If you name a son "Cthulhu Fhtagn Copeland," people will call him "Skip." Ditto band names.
(4) As a corollary to rule (3), keep in mind that you have no control over which word in your longer band name people will settle on. The Pogues began life as Pogue Mahone (Póg mo Thóin), which means "Kiss my Ass." If you name your band The Butthole Surfers, you will be truely fortunate if you hear people saying, "Going to the Surfers' concert?"
Every rule has exceptions. What are you going to put on an album cover for The The? Dé Danann eventually dropped the accent on the first word, but I'll bet they still got people who looked up at marquees and said, "The hall's giving out free yogurt?" Heck, The Beatles had a name built on a misspelling.
