In 1743, the English naturalist George Edwards included a picture and a description of the lesser vasa parrot in his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds.

Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Psittacus niger and cited Edwards's work.

[5] The lesser vasa parrot is now placed in the genus Coracopsis that was introduced in 1832 by the German ornithologist Johann Georg Wagler.

It also found that the Mascarene parrot line diverged 4.6 to 9 million years ago, prior to the formation of Réunion, indicating this must have happened elsewhere.

They also noted that if Mascarinus was confirmed to be embedded within the genus Coracopsis, the latter would become a junior synonym, since the former name is older.