Named after the Van Wyck Expressway and the old Queens town of Jamaica.
The expressway was built along what was then Van Wyck Boulevard; street and road were both named after Robert Anderson Van Wyck (1849–1918), the first mayor of New York City after the five boroughs were consolidated in 1898. How to say ‘Wyck’ was long disputed: it could rhyme with ‘lick’ or ‘like’. Jamaica may come from Yameco, from a Lenape word for ‘beaver’.