Sandy Row is first recorded in 1783 on Dobbs plan 2 (IHTA xii, 18). The name has been the subject of some debate. John J Marshall states that "no satisfactory explanation has ever been given of how this famous thoroughfare got its name" (Marshall, Belfast Telegraph, 12/02/1941). On the one hand, it has been explained by a personal name: 'People, probably weavers, were living in the Sandy Row area as far back as the 1740s, when a lease of land there was granted to one Alexander (Sandy) Frazer, who is probably commemorated in the name" (Weatherall & Templeton 2008, 111). Marcus Patton, however, asserts quite definitely that "the name came from sand-banks close to Tea Lane on the N side' (Patton 1993, 294). This is supported by geological descriptions of South Belfast: 'To the south-west of the town deposits of sand — the Malone Sands, deposits in a late glacial lake created as the ice retreated — and glacial clays create the Malone Ridge, which forms the main routeway to the south' (IHTA xii, 1).
The name of the house Sandymount, located in Stranmillis, alludes to the sandy soil on this ridge. The broad bulk of the ridge descended sharply to the plain and ended at Bradbury Place, at the junction of Malone Road and Lisburn Road. However, there is a narrow raised strip of sandy soil which continued northwards along the line of Sandy Row, affording an indirect but dry and stable access route to the town. This route was particularly important in the 18th century, before Dublin Road and Great Victoria Street were built across marshy ground. The following anecdote recounted by Benn highlights Sandy Row's strategic importance: 'We remember, and it must have been several years after 1804, when a person from the County of Armagh, coming to visit an old friend in Belfast, complained of the way into the town by which he had been induced to come, and which led him in at the back of the Linen Hall ditch. He said he would never travel that way again, as his horse was nearly up to the saddle-girths, but would travel in future by the good old path of Sandy Row, Mill Street and Castle Street' (Benn, A History of the Town of Belfast, vol. ii, 1880, pp. 49-50).
On James Williamson's map of Belfast (1791) Lisburn Road (the name at that time for what is now Malone Road / University Road) is shown arriving from the south and continuing over Saltwater Bridge as far as Barrack Street. This implies that Sandy Row was originally viewed as a sub-section of the old Lisburn Road.
Tea Lane was an earlier name for Rowland Street (Marshall, Belfast Telegraph, 10/02/1941), later partially replaced by Rowland Way, and the sand-banks were probably beside the Owenvarra or Blackstaff, which was still an open river when Sandy Row first came into being in the late eighteenth century. On the Ordnance Survey Second Edition 6” to the mile map (1846), the Blackstaff River is shown flowing under Sandy Row at Saltwater Bridge. The location of this bridge corresponds to the present-day junction of Sandy Row / Linfield Road / Bruce Street, but the river is now unseen as it culverted for its entire passage under the city.