Named after the Maison-Blanche quarter, after a hamlet named for an inn, the Maison Blanche ('white house').
The hamlet stood on the avenue d'Italie, the old high road to Fontainebleau, at about the height of today's station. Its inn is said to have belonged to the father of the historian Victor Duruy, though this is probably a confusion. The quarter, once the northern part of the commune of Gentilly, was annexed to Paris in 1860.