The peak's name honors Jimmy D. Hinkhouse (1943-1995), a Washington State mountaineer, economist with the Boeing Corporation in Seattle, and founder of One Step at a Time, a local mountaineering club/12-step substance abuse recovery program. He died of hypothermia at age 52 while climbing Mount McKinley. The USGS officially recognized the name in 2001. Prior to that the peak had several variant names such as State Crag, Towers of the Throat Gripper, Fickle Peak, and Washington Pass Peak.