Discovered at the San Francisco mine, near Villa Tunari (in Alto Chapare), Bolivia, in 1976, originally it was called ferridravite, for the composition and the assumed relationship to dravite, i.e., "ferric dravite" .
The name dravite was used for the first time by Gustav Tschermak (1836–1927), Professor of Mineralogy and Petrography at the University of Vienna, in his book Lehrbuch der Mineralogie (published in 1884) for magnesium-rich (and sodium-rich) tourmaline from the village Unterdrauburg, Drava river area, Carinthia, Austro-Hungarian Empire.