From Mount Olivet (Mount of Olives) in Jerusalem, a biblically significant place name.
Olivet carries one of the most storied geographical associations of any name in the Western tradition. The Mount of Olives — Olivet — rises east of Jerusalem, and appears throughout Hebrew scripture as a place of prophecy, lament, and divine encounter. King David fled across it during Absalom's rebellion; the prophet Zechariah named it as the site of apocalyptic transformation; and in the Christian Gospels it is the hill from which Jesus delivers the Olivet Discourse, the great prophetic sermon, and to which he retreats to pray before his arrest.
The name thus carries an entire landscape of sacred memory compressed into four syllables. As a personal name, Olivet is a feminized diminutive of the olive root — related to Olive, Olivia, and Oliver — but distinguished by its -et suffix, which gives it a French lilt akin to Violet or Harriet. Its use as a given name appears sporadically in the nineteenth century, particularly in devout Protestant households in England and America where biblical place-names were fashionable.
It never reached the mainstream popularity of Olivia, which keeps it in a charmed register of the rare and the literary. Today Olivet inhabits the same aesthetic space as Clover, Fleur, or Sylvie — names with botanical or natural roots, a vaguely vintage softness, and just enough unusual syllables to feel intentional. The olive tree itself — ancient symbol of peace, wisdom, and endurance — lends the name an ecological resonance that feels freshly relevant. For parents who want Olivia but want it less travelled, Olivet is a quietly luminous alternative with a landscape inside it.