The Hispaniolan euphonia was
formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist
Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of
Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the manakins in the
genusPipra and coined the
binomial namePipra musica.[2] The specific epithet is from
Latinmusicus meaning "musical" or "musician".[3] Gmelin based his account on "L'organiste", a bird from
Saint-Domingue, a French colony on the island of
Hispaniola, that had been described in 1778 by the French polymath the
Comte de Buffon in his multi-volume work, Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux.[4] A hand-coloured engraving by
François-Nicolas Martinet was published separately to accompany Buffon's text.[5]
The Hispaniolan euphonia was formerly placed in the genus Euphonia.[6] A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2020 found that the "blue-hooded" euphonias, the Hispaniolan,
elegant and
golden-rumped euphonias, formed a distinct clade that was
sister to the genus Chlorophonia.[7] To resolve the
paraphyly these three species were moved from Euphonia to Chlorophonia.[8][9]
The Hispaniolan euphonia was previously considered to be
conspecific with the
Puerto Rican euphonia (Chlorophonia sclateri) and the
Lesser Antillean euphonia (Chlorophonia flavifrons). The common name "Antillean euphonia" was used for the species complex. The complex was split based on the significant differences in plumage.[8][10]