There is a long ago thread where someone called me out for allowing such a bad course name. I replied that "the next course I get to name will be my first course I get to name."
In reality, I eventually did name a few courses, including the obvious "Quarry at Giant's Ridge." They actually hadn't decided on a name, but I kept referring to it as the Quarry in press conferences, and it sort of stuck.
I also named two courses, both "the Wilderness." Down in Lake Jackson, TX, they were going to name it after an old council person, which I didn't feel was appropriate for the quality of the course (has any course named Gus Brown Muni ever been good?) The course was located in Wilderness park, so I thought it sounded good and was a natural for local folks to locate it. The course faced years of lawsuits from the Sierra Club and I thought it was probably dead when the Fortune Bay project came up. They were debating names when I excused myself to go to the restrooms, where I saw their slogan above the urinal "We put the wild in Wilderness." I returned to the room, suggested it, and they loved it, so there it was. Naturally, the LJ course won it's lawsuits and we started construction on both courses at the same time.
Had the LJ project also made the Golf Digest "Best New" list (it barely finished out of the list) I am sure I would have had some questions about having the Wilderness as my go-to standard name......
Short version, gca's usually don't have a say. And, similar to Tom, my feeling always was they pick the name, and I make sure the course makes it a worthy one by being a worthy course. I mean, is "Pine Valley" really that great a name or is it now because of it's association with the course?