Who the heck chooses these wacky drug names?! Is there some sort of protocol big pharma follows? And then every drug has at least two names . . .
There's some pattern to the generic names. For example, the "ib" at the end of "imatinib" stands for "inhibitor", as I recall. Imatinib inhibits the effect of one of the human growth factors.
The reason every drug ends up having two names is because the initial developer wants to take best advantage of patent protection. Until the patent on a drug expires, only the developing company can market it. After the patent expires, the developer hopes to maintain an advantage by having the public remember the brand name rather than the generic name.
Imatinib, the generic name, was developed by Novartis and sold under their brand name Gleevec. The Novartis patent ran out a couple of years ago. Hopefully the $300 per pill price has come down.