The name of the settlement was changed from Sveti Duh (literally, 'Holy Spirit'), referring the local church, to Podolševa in 1953. The name was changed on the basis of the 1948 Law on Names of Settlements and Designations of Squares, Streets, and Buildings as part of efforts by Slovenia's postwar communist government to remove religious elements from toponyms. The name Podolševa is a fused prepositional phrase that has lost its case inflection, from pod 'below' + Olševa, thus referring to the settlement's location below Mount Olševa. In the past the German name was Heiligengeist.