"collina" was first published as "Banksia collina" by Robert Brown in 1810, based on specimens he found among hills in the vicinity of the Hunter River, New South Wales in New South Wales in 1802.Brown did not give an explicit reason for the specific epithet "collina", but it is universally accepted that it is from the Latin "collinus" ("of hills"), in reference to the topography of the area in which he first found it.