Why is the name for NO nitric oxide

I was wondering why NO is named nitric oxide and not hyponitrite. For instance, the name of ClO is hypochlorite not chloric oxide.

NO is a neutral molecule, not a polyatomic ion, and is called nitrogen monoxide.

The hypochlorite ion, ClO^- (with a -1 charge), is a polyatomic ion.
As a neutral molecule ClO would be called chlorine monoxide.

Pisgahchemist seems to be completely unaware that the common name for NO is actually nitric oxide. He omits answering your question and then gives you the IUPAC name as if that is what you actually asked for. Also, nitric oxide is still a very popular name among chemists. In fact, all the recent scientific findings of NO chemistry do refer to the molecule as nitric oxide, just the way scientists don't refer to water as dihydrogen monoxide. It's a common name, but it isn't going away.
Anyway, going back to your question, nitric oxide was the name given to this molecule because it contains the highest charge and smallest number of atoms under the uncharged NOx's family.

The name, nitric oxide, ends in "-ide" to indicate that it is a binary compound (that is, it has no charge). It is actually an older name and is not preferred by chemists now. The IUPAC name is nitrogen(II) oxide. The hypochlorite ION has the formula ClO‾¹, the minus one charge indicating that it is only part of a compound.

(For completeness, NO‾¹ is the nitrite ion and ClO is chlorine(II) oxide, but also has older names.)