French mycologist Pierre Bulliard described the species as "Boletus piperatus" in 1790. In its taxonomic history, it has been transferred to the genera "Leccinum" (Samuel Frederick Gray, 1821), "Viscipellis" (Lucien Quélet, 1886), "Ixocomus" (Quélet, 1888), "Suillus" (Otto Kuntze, 1898), and "Ceriomyces" (William Alphonso Murrill, 1909). It was reclassified and given its current binomial name in 1908 by Frédéric Bataille when he made it the type species of the newly circumscribed genus "Chalciporus". The species name "piperatus" means "peppery" in Latin. It is commonly known as the "peppery bolete".