Delancey Street honours a colonial governor; Essex Street, an English county.
Delancey Street is named after James De Lancey Sr. (1703–1760), chief justice, lieutenant governor and acting colonial governor of the Province of New York, whose farm lay in what is now the Lower East Side. Essex Street was laid out by a James Delancey just before the American Revolution as the east side of a planned ‘Delancey Square’ and named after the English county of Essex.