The Eurasian stone-curlew was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Charadrius oedicnemus.

[3] The species is now placed in the genus Burhinus that was introduced by the German zoologist Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger in 1811.

[7][8] The name "stone curlew" was recorded by Francis Willughby in 1678 as a "third sort of Godwit, which in Cornwall they call the Stone-Curlew, differing from the precedent in that it hath a much shorter and slenderer Bill than either of them".

[9] It derives from the bird's nocturnal calls sounding like the only distantly related Eurasian curlew Numenius arquata and its preference for barren stony heaths.

The Eurasian stone-curlew is largely nocturnal, particularly when singing its loud wailing songs, which are reminiscent of that of curlews.

[16] Although the International Union for Conservation of Nature currently categorizes the Eurasian stone-curlew as a least-concern species,[1] some populations have shown declines due to agricultural intensification.