Named after Yorckstraße, which honours the Prussian general Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg.
Yorck (1759–1830) signed the Convention of Tauroggen with a Russian general on 30 December 1812 without his king's authorisation, making the Prussian-Russian coalition against Napoleon possible. The street was planned in James Hobrecht's development plan of 1862 as part of the Generalszug, a sequence of streets and squares. Here the U-Bahn station lies between two separate S-Bahn stations.