The superficial distinguishing characteristics include soft and short fur, lacking the long guard hairs of other species and adpressed against the body.

John Gould proposed the epithet cervinipes for the "fawn-like colouring" of the feet and tarsi, assigning it to the genus Mus and giving an English name of "Buff-footed Rat".

[2] Gould received his specimens from the early natural history collector Frederick Strange, who labelled the collections as being "Stradbrook Island, Moreton Bay, where it is called Corrill by the natives,—Richmond River, where the Aborigines term it Cunduoo,—and the plains bordering the upper parts of the River Brisbane.

"[2] This species is commonly known by the descriptive English common name fawn-footed melomys, but during the 1990s proposals emerged to restore indigenous Australian names.

Accordingly, in 1995, the Australian Nature Conservation Agency published recommendations for the common names of rodents.