The island was named after Andreas Hovgaard, a polar explorer and officer of the Danish Navy who led an expedition to the Kara Sea on steamship Dijmphna in 1882–83.

The Dijmphna Sound limits the island to the west and north, and to the southwest lies the mouth of the Nioghalvfjerd Fjord of the Nioghalvfjerdsbrae glacier.

[1] Hovgaard Island was explored and named by the ill-fated Denmark Expedition to the North-East Coast of Greenland in 1906–1908.

[4] In 1910 Ejnar Mikkelsen and Iver Iversen (1884–1968), two members of the Danish Alabama Expedition struggled against the cold and famine on the island.

Mikkelsen wrote the following about this bleak, inhospitable place: ... and the name Hovgaard Island will stay with us forever connected with hunger, deprivation, cold and distress.