From Latin 'Sabina', referring to the ancient Sabine people of central Italy.
Savina is a Latin name with roots stretching back to ancient Italy, derived from "Sabina" — the feminine form of Sabinus, the name given to members of the Sabine people, an Italic tribe who inhabited the Apennine mountains northeast of Rome. The Sabines were so intertwined with early Roman history that Roman mythology invented an entire founding story around them: the Rape of the Sabine Women, in which Rome's founders, short of wives, carried off Sabine women to populate their new city. Whatever one makes of the myth, it cemented the Sabines — and by extension the name Sabina and its variants — as foundational to Roman identity.
Saint Savina of Milan, a third-century Christian martyr, gave the name particular currency in the Catholic tradition of northern Italy. She is venerated for burying the bodies of Christian martyrs during Roman persecutions, an act of tremendous personal courage, and churches in Milan were dedicated to her memory. This saintly association spread the name across the Italian-speaking world and into Eastern Europe, where Savina and Sabina persist as living names today.
The name also appears in operatic history — Sabina is a character in Haydn's opera "Lo Speziale" — and in the twentieth century through the glamorous figure of Sabina Spielrein, the Russian-Jewish psychoanalyst whose relationships with both Freud and Jung have been the subject of films and scholarly attention. Savina, as distinct from the more common Sabina, carries an Italian lilt that feels both antique and musical. It is a name with deep European roots, a martyr's strength, and an uncommon beauty that rewards those willing to look past the familiar.