Named after Utica, a city in Upstate New York.
Utica Avenue is one of several streets named for the upstate city. Utica shares its name with an ancient Punic and later Roman city in Tunisia. The city’s own name was drawn from a hat at a 1798 meeting at Bagg’s Tavern. It fits a wider pattern: many central New York places have Greco-Roman names, many of them assigned by Robert Harpur.