The common grasshopper warbler was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1779 in his "Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux". The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the "Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle" which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name "Motacilla naevia" in his catalogue of the "Planches Enluminées"; he used the word "naevia" that had earlier been used by Brisson.