Named after the Plaisance quarter, which recalls the old hamlet of Plaisance ('pleasure').
The name is old: a 17th-century drawing shows a farm called 'Playsance' on today's rue du Château. The developer Alexandre Chauvelot, who bought land between the avenue du Maine and the rue de Vanves from 1835 to 1842 to sell in plots, did not invent it, but made it popular in the mid-19th century to attract buyers.