The greater yellowlegs was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[2] Gmelin based his description on the "stone snipe" seen feeding in autumn in Chateau Bay, Labrador, that had been described in 1785 by both the English ornithologist John Latham and by the Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant.

[3][4] The greater yellowlegs is now placed in the genus Tringa that was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.

[5][6] The name Tringa is the Neo-Latin word given to the green sandpiper by the Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi in 1603 based on Ancient Greek trungas, a thrush-sized, white-rumped, tail-bobbing wading bird mentioned by Aristotle.

Among them, these three species show all the basic leg and foot colours found in the shanks, demonstrating that this character is paraphyletic.

The greater yellowlegs and the greenshank share a coarse, dark, and fairly crisp breast pattern as well as much black on the shoulders and back in breeding plumage.