The common gull was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the current binomial name Larus canus.

[10] The original English word mew is related to German möwe and Dutch meeuw, and is ultimately onomatopoeic.

[11] In Norse influenced regions of Britain, variations include maw or sea-maw, the old Norfolk form being mow.

The word gull comes from a Celtic root, with the first recorded usage in English from the 1400s; the modern Welsh form is gwylan.

It is further distinguished from the ring-billed gull by its shorter, more tapered bill, which is a more greenish shade of yellow and is unmarked during the breeding season.

In winter, the head is streaked grey and the bill often has a poorly defined blackish band near the tip, which is sometimes sufficiently obvious to cause confusion with ring-billed gull.

[14] Young birds have scaly black-brown upperparts and a neat wing pattern, and pink legs which become greyish in the second year before tuning yellow.

[21] The Kamchatka gull is occasionally seen in northwestern North America mainly in spring, and there is one autumn record in Newfoundland.