He introduced the French name "Le grimpereau violet de Brésil" in the mistakenly belief that his specimen had been collected in Brazil.

[2] When the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae in 1788 he included Van Hasselt's sunbird using Brisson's account.

Temminck coined the binomial name Nectarinia hasseltii, choosing the specific epithet to honour the collector.

Under the rules of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature Gmelin's epithet has priority and Temminck's name is a junior synonym.

[6] Van Hasselt's sunbird is now one of six species placed in the genus Leptocoma that was introduced in 1850 by the German ornithologist Jean Cabanis.