'Holborn' may mean the brook in the hollow – or the old brook.
A charter of 959 uses the name for the River Fleet, which ran through a steep valley here; it may come from hol, hollow, and bourne, brook. The 16th-century historian John Stow thought instead of the Old Bourne, a stream he believed ran into the Fleet at Holborn Bridge. In 1933 the station became Holborn (Kingsway), a suffix later dropped.