Named after Greenpoint, originally a grassy point jutting into the East River.
European settlers first used the name for a small bluff at what is now the west end of Freeman Street; it later covered the whole peninsula. When Neziah Bliss developed Greenpoint, he named its east–west streets alphabetically from north to south, and this one holds the L place: it has been L Street, Lincoln Street and, in the 1860s, National Avenue.