The locality takes its name from the Nive River. The river in turn was named by Sir Thomas Mitchell, the New South Wales Surveyor-General, on 13 September 1846, after the Nive River in south western France, where Lord Wellington engaged in the Battle of the Nive in the Peninsula War in 1813. Nive Downs was a huge sheep station that was broken up into home blocks and allocated to returned servicemen in a ballot after the 2nd world war.