What does the title of the play / movie actually mean ?

I do love the title, but have no idea what it refers to.

Several different things.

First, "the Iceman" can refer to Death - Death comes. And, or, "cometh" could be read as "cums" - I've seen this argued, but it may be too much of a stretch beyond O'Neill's intent.

Here are a couple of more extended discussions:

http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/Iceman.html
Meaning of the Title
In American culture, many bawdy jokes focus on wives who commit adultery with a mailman, milkman, plumber, traveling salesman, or any other man who knocks on the front door while the husband is away. In 1912, the year in which The Iceman Cometh is set, one of the deliverymen who stopped frequently at homes was the iceman. He delivered blocks of ice used to refrigerate food. Like milkmen and traveling salesmen, icemen became characters in these bawdy jokes. In the play, Theodore (“Hickey”) Hickman is known for joking that his wife has cheated on him with the iceman. Rocky, the nighttime bartender, refers to Hickey’s stories when he says, “Remember how he woiks up dat gag about his wife, when he's cockeyed, cryin' over her picture and den springin' it on yuh all of a sudden dat he left her in de hay wid de iceman?” Chuck, the daytime bartender, later tells his girlfriend, Cora, “don't do no cheatin' wid de iceman. . . .“ After Hickey arrives at the saloon, he announces that he has quit drinking and attempts to get the men to abandon their “pipe dreams.” Larry speculates that Hickey’s changed behavior developed because his wife was unfaithful, saying: “Your iceman joke finally came home to roost, did it?” Larry is wrong, of course, about Hickey’s wife. But there is an iceman – Hickey. He is an iceman in the sense that he kills, as a frost kills vegetable and citrus crops and, in popular slang, as a gangster “ices” an enemy. As the Iceman of the title, Hickey killed his wife. He also attempted to kill the pipe dreams of the occupants of Harry Hope’s hotel and succeeded in killing Larry Slade’s pipe dream. In addition, he incited Don Parritt’s suicide. Finally, as a murderer who reported himself to the police, he pronounced a death sentence upon himself. The word cometh serves two purposes: First, it gives the title an appealing cadence inasmuch as it contains two syllables to balance the two syllables of iceman. A title such as The Iceman Comes lacks this cadence. Second, the consonant beginning the second syllable of iceman and cometh–m – creates alliteration, further enhancing the aural effect of the title. Third, the archaic suffix of cometh invests the title with biblical or Shakespearean gravity. There are many passages in the Bible that use cometh in an ominous sense, including the following: Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season – Job 5: 26.

Or, http://www.answers.com/topic/the-iceman-cometh-play-4
Symbolism
A symbol is something that stands for or suggests something other than itself. In The Iceman Cometh the iceman is a symbol of death. In the time period of the play, before there were electric refrigerators, people owned iceboxes which kept food cold by keeping it in an enclosed space with large blocks of ice. The ice was delivered by the iceman, who traveled from door to door.
From the beginning of the play, the roomers look forward to Hickey’s running gag about leaving his wife in bed with the iceman. When they discover how much Hickey has changed, some begin to suspect that he did find his wife with the iceman. The figure of the iceman is easily associated with death. In western culture, death is traditionally associated with cold. In addition, it was once customary to use ice to preserve corpses until they could be buried. From this practice comes the slang expressions “to put someone on ice” or “to ice someone,” both of which mean “to kill” that “someone.” The iceman Hickey left Evelyn with is Death. When used in the title with the word “cometh,” the implication is that Death comes in the present tense — it is always arriving for someone. At the end of the play, Death comes for Parritt. Larry expresses a longing for Death, the iceman, who will eventually come for everyone in the bar.

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Very simply, it's an old joke, from the time a hundred years ago when ice had to be actually placed in an "icebox" to keep your food cold:

A man comes home from work on a hot summer day and calls upstairs to his wife:
"Honey, has the iceman come yet?"
She responds, "No, but he's breathin' hard."

That's the sex joke.
The symbolism is explained in the other posts.

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