Named after 52nd Street in Woodside, once Lincoln Avenue.
The station is also known as 52nd Street–Lincoln Avenue, keeping the street’s older name. When the Flushing Line opened in 1917, the Queens Topographical Bureau was at the very beginning of a borough-wide street numbering plan, which was not complete until the late 1920s. Writer Kevin Walsh lists Lincoln Avenue among the old Queens names that numbering replaced.