The name Gallinago was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 as a subdivision of the genus Scolopax.

[3] Instead, the erection of the genus Gallinago for the snipes was credited to the German zoologist Carl Ludwig Koch in a book published in 1816.

[4] But in 1920 it was discovered that the German naturalist Johann Samuel Traugott Frenzel had erected the genus Capella for the snipes in 1801.

[8] This all changed in 1956 when the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature ruled that Gallinago Brisson 1760 should have priority for the genus with the common snipe as the type species.

Fossil bones of some undescribed Gallinago species most similar to the great snipe have been recovered in Late Miocene or Early Pliocene deposits (c. 5 mya) of Lee Creek Mine, USA.