Named after the Freie Universität and the former Thielplatz, which honoured Hugo Thiel.
The station opened in 1913 as Thielplatz. Hugo Thiel (1839–1918), a senior official in the Prussian agriculture ministry, chaired the royal commission that turned the Domäne Dahlem into a villa colony and a science quarter. The neighbouring Thielpark was called Thielplatz until the 1950s. In December 2016 the station was renamed after the Freie Universität Berlin, founded in 1948, whose campus is in Dahlem.