But when you're talking about rock bands, the right name means everything.

Take a group of British lads who in 1964 changed their name to The High Numbers on the advice of their manager, who thought it would appeal to the "mods." The band's first single bombed, the band fired the manager and went back to their old name: The Who.

A bad band name can doom you. Both Hootie & the Blowfish and Chumbawamba topped the charts once, but would they still be around if their band names were cool and not stupid? (Both bands made a list, posted last year on Cracked.com, of the 25 most ridiculous band names in rock history. The No. 1 most ridiculous was !!! - pronounced "chk-chk-chk" - which, the listmaker notes, is impossible to Google.)

Perhaps the most unfortunate name choice was made by the California mid-'90s band Toad the Wet Sprocket. The name came from a "Monty Python" sketch of bad made-up rock-band names - and these guys didn't get that it was a joke.

This brings us to Fictionist, a Provo band on the verge of stardom.

The band is performing Wednesday in Austin, Texas, one of five finalists in The Sound and the Jury, a nationwide contest in which the winner gets a slot in this weekend's Austin City Limits Music Festival.

The band just a week ago announced it was changing its name to Fictionist. Before that, it was called Good Morning Maxfield.

The old band name, as I opined on the Vulture blog last week, is "slightly silly" - it sounds like the peppy local TV show you'd watch to get recipes and horticulture tips after "The Today Show" - but kind of fun, like their music (or at least the two tracks I heard on their MySpace page).

There's only one Maxfield in the band, lead singer and guitarist Stuart Maxfield, and I imagine the other guys (guitarist Robbie Connolly, keyboardist Jacob Jones, drummer Aaron Anderson, guitarist Brandon Kitterman and bass player Jeremy Bowen) could get resentful over time.

But Fictionist, besides being difficult to wrap the tongue around (I keep mistakenly saying "fashionista"), is a shade on the pretentious side. It sounds like the name of an avant-garde literary magazine, not a rockin' band.

According to a post Maxfield put on his blog Thursday (linking back to my blog post and several comments from readers who prefer the new name), the point was to break convention: "Honestly, we picked the name for controversy's sake. It is the perfect non-band name, and in a world of regular old band names why not be the one band that's different? Being in a band is about standing out after all." Good luck in Austin, guys - whatever you call yourselves.

vulture@ sltrib.com