A safe prime is a prime \(p\) such that \((p-1)/2\) is also prime. That smaller companion is a Sophie Germain prime, so the two classes are mirror images of each other: \(p\) is safe exactly when \((p-1)/2\) is Sophie Germain.
The "safe" refers to cryptography. The multiplicative group modulo a safe prime has a large prime-order subgroup, which blocks small-subgroup attacks on Diffie–Hellman key exchange, and safe primes resist Pollard's \(p-1\) factoring method. Standardized DH groups (RFC 3526) all use safe primes with thousands of bits.