In Sri Lanka, this bird and several other green pigeon are known as bata goya in the Sinhala language.

The Sri Lanka green pigeon was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[3] Gmelin based his description on the "Pompadour pigeon" that had been described and illustrated in 1776 by the English naturalist Peter Brown.

The specific epithet is from Madame de Pompadour, a mistress of Louis XV of France.

Its flight is fast and direct, with the regular beats and an occasional sharp flick of the wings that are characteristic of pigeons in general.