Named after the place and avenue Victor-Hugo, after the writer Victor Hugo (1802–1885).
The avenue, until then avenue d’Eylau, took his name in 1881 while Hugo was living there; his letters were addressed ‘À monsieur Victor Hugo, En son avenue, à Paris’. He died in his house on the avenue in 1885, and the square, then place d’Eylau, was renamed after him by the city council on the very day of his death.