Variant of Olympia, from Greek 'Olympos,' the mountain home of the gods in mythology.
Olimpia is the Italian and Spanish form of Olympia, a name drawn directly from Mount Olympus — *Ólympos* in Greek — the mythological home of the twelve Olympian gods and the highest peak in Greece. The name carries within it the entire architecture of classical Greek religion and culture: the thunderous authority of Zeus, the games held every four years in Olympia's sacred precinct in the Peloponnese to honor him, and the ideal of physical and intellectual excellence those games embodied. To bear this name is to carry, however lightly, an association with humanity's oldest organized celebration of competitive achievement.
Among the name's notable historical bearers, Olympias — mother of Alexander the Great — is perhaps the most formidable: a woman of iron will and political cunning who shaped the ancient world's most consequential conqueror and fought savagely for his legacy after his death. Olimpia Morata was a remarkable sixteenth-century Italian humanist scholar who corresponded with the leading minds of the Reformation and whose collected works were published posthumously across Europe. In more recent history, Olimpia has been a common name in Italy, Argentina, and other parts of the Spanish- and Italian-speaking world, maintaining an unbroken thread from classical antiquity to the present.
In the Italian spelling, the name sheds one *l* compared to its English counterpart Olympia, giving it a slightly warmer, more approachable feel while retaining its classical grandeur. It ages beautifully — commanding in adulthood, musical in childhood — and its natural nickname Pia is both elegant and practical.