'Wapping' may come from wapol, a marsh.
It was long thought to record the settlement of Waeppa's people, but more recent scholarship doubts it: the area was almost entirely marshland, where early settlement was unlikely, and no such personal name has been found. Wapping mill is recorded in 1218. The station opened in 1869 as Wapping and Shadwell and became plain Wapping in 1876.