[1] In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description and an illustration of the white-throated oxylabes in the third volume of his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected on the island of Madagascar.

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

[4] When in 1789 the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae he included the white-throated oxylabes based on Brisson's description.

[6][7] The genus name is from Ancient Greek oxulabēs meaning "quick at seizing".

The upperparts are dark olive-brown with a rufous top and side of head.