Named after the place and rue Balard, honouring the chemist Antoine-Jérôme Balard (1802–1876).
Balard, a Montpellier pharmacist, discovered bromine; in Paris he taught chemistry, with Louis Pasteur as his assistant at the École normale supérieure. The street was named in 1900, the place in 1907. Balard is the only station at a gate of Paris not named after its gate, the porte de Sèvres, avoiding confusion with Pont de Sèvres on line 9.