This is a medium size parrot, around 31 cm (12 in) in length, primarily green except for a light blue rear crown and nape, pale blue lower back and rump, scalloped shoulders with orange-brown on black coverts, and blackish underwings with green underwing coverts.

[2] In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the blue-naped parrot in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

[3] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

[4] 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.

Linnaeus included a terse description, used the binomial name Psittacus lucionensis and cited Brisson's work.