Named after Mehringdamm, which honours the Marxist writer Franz Mehring.
From 1864 the street was called Belle-Alliance-Straße, the Prussian name for the Battle of Waterloo, and the station opened under that name in 1924. After the Second World War the street became Franz-Mehring-Straße and, in 1947, Mehringdamm; the station followed each change. Franz Mehring (1846–1919) was a Marxist publicist and politician who wrote a biography of Karl Marx.