The naming derives from the ancient Greek eu, meaning "true", and skelos, meaning "limb", in reference to well-ossified limb bones with crests to which muscles were attached.

[2] Euskelia is a stem-based taxon including all temnospondyls more closely related to Eryops (an eryopoid) than to Parotosuchus (a stereospondyl).

The clade was named by Yates & Warren (2000), whose phylogenetic analysis argued that eryopoids were more closely related to dissorophoids than to stereospondyls.

[1] Other studies propose a different structure of the temnospondyl family tree.

That study offered the name Eryopiformes for the eryopoid+stereospondylomorph clade, excluding dissorophoids.