Cirrhitus is a genus of marine ray-finned fish, hawkfishes from the family Cirrhitidae.

[1] However, it was later shown that Lacépède's C. maculatus was synonymous with Labrus pinnulatus described in manuscript by the German naturalist and explorer Johann Reinhold Forster from Tahiti.

John Ernest Randall in his 1963 review of the family Cirrhitidae did not recognise these species but treated them as subspecies.

They have large heads with a blunt snout and have a fringe of cirri on the posterior margin of the anterior nostril.

The upper margin of the preoperculum either has small serrations or it smooth and the gill cover has 2 flattened spines.

[4] Cirrhites hawkfishes are found around the tropical seas of the world, except for the western Atlantic Ocean.