In 1895, Oskar Boettger described a middle-sized brownish frog species from the Ryūkyū Islands as Rana okinavana.

[3] It was noted that the type locality was undetermined—perhaps Okinawa, but the specimens were part of a shipment from an animal dealer, not supplied from the person who originally collected them.

When World War II interrupted further research, Boettger's taxon was firmly associated with the Okinawan brown frogs, though nobody ever had bothered to travel to the Senckenberg Museum or the Übersee-Museum[5] in Germany to directly compare the type specimens[6] with frogs from Okinawa.

[2] By the mid-20th century, it was recognized that on both Okinawa and the Yaeyama group brown frogs could be found, and R. okinavana was applied to them, without comparing actual specimens.

And thus, the frogs formerly known as R. psaltes, which had also been found on Taiwan in the meantime, turned out to be the same species that Boettger had described, and hence according to ICZN rules is now known as R.