It is found along the eastern coast of Africa from Somalia to Durban across the Indian and Pacific Oceans as far east as the Line Islands and Hawaii.

Its range extends north to the Ryukyu Islands of Japan and south to the Great Barrier Reef, New Caledonia and Tonga.

[1] The scrawled butterflyfish is found at depths between 2 and 25 metres (6.6 and 82.0 ft) where it inhabits area rich in coral in clear lagoons and seaward reefs.

[3] The scrawled butterflyfish was first formally described in 1801 by the German naturalists Marcus Elieser Bloch((1723–1799) and Johann Gottlob Theaenus Schneider (1750–1822) with the type locality given as Ambon Island in Indonesia.

[4] The identity of the person that the specific name honours is not given by Black and Schneider but the type specimen was in the collection of the Museo Meyeri Lugduni Batavorum or Meyer’s Museum in Leiden, Netherlands.