In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the slate-coloured grosbeak in the supplement to his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in "America". He used the French name Le gros-bec bleu d'Amérique and the Latin name Coccothraustes americana caerulea.[2] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.[3] When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson in his Ornithologie.[3] One of these was the slate-coloured grosbeak. Linnaeus included a terse description, coined the binomial nameLoxia grossa and cited Brisson's work.[4] The specific namegrossa, grossus is Latin for "thick", "rough" or "coarse".[5] The type locality has been restricted to French Guiana.[6] This species is now placed in the genusSaltator that was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816.[7]
^ abAllen, J.A. (1910). "Collation of Brisson's genera of birds with those of Linnaeus". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 28: 317–335. hdl:2246/678.
^Jobling, J.A. (2018). del Hoyo, J.; Elliott, A.; Sargatal, J.; Christie, D.A.; de Juana, E. (eds.). "Key to Scientific Names in Ornithology". Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
^Paynter, Raymond A. Jr, ed. (1970). Check-list of Birds of the World. Vol. 13. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Museum of Comparative Zoology. p. 227.