The grey-hooded bush tanager was formally described in 1840 by the French ornithologist Frédéric de Lafresnaye from a sample collected near Bogotá in Colombia. He coined the binomial nameArremon rubrirostris.[2][3] The grey-hooded bush tanager is now the only species placed in the genus Cnemoscopus that was introduced in 1919 by the American ornithologists Outram Bangs and Thomas Penard.[4][5] The genus name combines the Ancient Greekknēmos meaning "mountain-slope" with skopos meaning "searcher" or "watcher". The specific epithet rubrirostris combines the Latin ruber meaning "red" with -rostris meaning "billed".[6]