English naturalist George Shaw—with illustrator Frederick Polydore Nodder—in "The Naturalist's Miscellany: Or, Coloured Figures Of Natural Objects; Drawn and Described Immediately From Nature" formally described the species in 1797 as "Coluber russelii", from a specimen presented to the British Museum by Scottish herpetologist Patrick Russell. Russell had written of the species in his 1796 work "An account of Indian serpents, collected on the coast of Coromandel", confirming its highly venomous nature by experimenting on chickens and dogs. He added the native people called it "katuka retula poda".