I was given to understand that's the name which was catchy enough to catch no with the newspapers and the like and that there were dozens of names floating round until the media effectively made the call.
There are dozens of fanciful names for the possible specific forms of dark matter. I, personally, am a fan of WIMPs* and MACHOs**. Physicists tend to be fanciful - we call things "quarks" and bet each other if we can get away with using odd words in papers, leading to the "penguin diagram".
But for the overall terms "dark matter" and "dark energy", I don't recall there were really any major contenders. They were coined by Fritz Zwicky (in 1933) and Michael Turner (in 1998, recalling Zwicky intentionally) respectively.
*Weakly Interacting Massive Particles
**Massive Compact Halo Objects