If you are interested in where these names come from, I recommend that you get a
Twinhan 1020a or 102g PCI card, and run the program Tsreader. It shows all the different data streams in one of these satellite signals. The stream you tune to has several streams. The only ones necessary to view a channel are the audio and video PIDs, but these don't contain the name of the channel. Usually, the name of the channel shows up in another stream called the SDT (service definition table), but sometimes it shows up in the NIT (network information table). Sometimes there will be names found in some othere PIDs as well. Often the SDT or NIT, etc will be missing from a feed, or often it will have incorrect info, ie the uplinkers just don't bother entering the info, since it isn't necessary. Also, for feeds that are part of a network, sometimes the SDT and NIT will list a whole bunch of channel names from different transponders and different satellites. One receiver/program would pop up a different channel name every time I tuned in a particular channel, because it was picking up info from another part of the network.
From what I've seen, different receivers pick up the names from different PIDs. Some may grab it from the SDT some from the NIT some from wherever it can find a name. But if it doesn't find a name, then most just use the services program number, which is listed in the PAT I think.
Anyway, again, I recommend Tsreader to anyone interested in seeing how these things work. I don't really understand most of what I see there, but it's interesting viewing.