In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the hook-billed vanga in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected on the island of Madagascar.

[2] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

[3] When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.

Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Lanius curvirostris and cited Brisson's work.

[6] Two subspecies are recognised:[7] A 2018 study on avian skull evolution has concluded that the ancestral neornithe had a beak most similar to this species.