[1] The sound was named and put on the map by William Scoresby (1789 – 1857) in 1822 in honour of Cornish chemist and inventor Sir Humphry Davy (1778 – 1829), president of the Royal Society from 1820 to 1827.

[2] In 1899, during the Swedish Greenland Expedition on which Swedish Arctic explorer Alfred Gabriel Nathorst found and first mapped King Oscar Fjord, he made southwards for the Davy Sound after having entered from Antarctic Sound.

But Davy sound was blocked by ice and Nathorst had to travel back north.

This proposal, by which the length of the Davy Sound would be greater than that corresponding to King Oscar Fjord, has not found wide acceptance.

[7] Even in the summertime the channel is usually encumbered by ice and tidal currents are strong and dangerous for navigation.