Named after the Griebnitzsee, a lake with a Slavic name.
The name of the narrow lake comes from the Slavic grib, ‘mushroom’, and (n)ica, ‘place’. The station opened in 1874 as Neubabelsberg, was renamed Babelsberg-Ufastadt in 1938 after the growing Ufa film grounds nearby, and Griebnitzsee in 1949. Until 1990 it was a GDR border station on the transit route to West Berlin.