In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the slate-coloured grosbeak in the supplement to his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in "America".

[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 in his Ornithologie.

Linnaeus included a terse description, coined the binomial name Loxia grossa and cited Brisson's work.

[6] This species is now placed in the genus Saltator that was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816.