If you’re like us, you probably assumed Kennedy Street was named for the president.

After all, it’s part of a group of Hyattsville streets named for famous Americans: Hamilton, Jefferson,  Madison.

But as we noted the other day, those streets were renamed in 1941 — too early for the 35th president, who had then just finished college and was about to join the Navy.

His father, Joe, was more noted at the time, having served three years as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, but that hardly would have put him in the esteemed company of the founding fathers.

At any rate, Matt Johnson of the Greater Greater Washington blog, who has written about street names, tells Hyattsville Wire that the street names follow the same order as streets in Northwest D.C. which likely date back to the 1920s, so that pretty much rules out anyone in the Kennedy clan.

“Kennedy Street was probably named after a local figure who has been lost to time,” he wrote in an email. “Maybe he was head of the public works department. Maybe a land owner. Maybe the street isn’t named after anyone, and is just named after a common Irish-American surname (since it’s a three syllable word beginning with K).”