Named after Kensington, the homestead of a Saxon called Cynesige.
The Domesday Book of 1086 records Kensington as Chenesitone, 'Chenesi's homestead'. 'West Kensington' itself was a Victorian sales name for Fulham's hamlet of North End. The station opened there in 1874 as North End (Fulham); two Dorset builders, William Henry Gibbs and John P. Flew, who called their housing scheme the West Kensington estate, persuaded the railway to rename it, and it became West Kensington in 1877.