The spur-winged lapwing was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.

[5] The spur-winged lapwing is now one of 23 species placed in the genus Vanellus that was introduced in 1760 by the French naturalist Mathurin Jacques Brisson.

[citation needed] In eastern and southern Africa the species has seen a range increase, entering Zambia for the first time in 1999 and spreading south and west.

The "spur-winged plover" was identified by Henry Scherren as the "trochilus" bird said by the Greek historian Herodotus[8] to be involved in what would now be called a cleaning symbiosis with the Nile crocodile.

[9] However, there is no reliable evidence that this or any other species in fact has such a relationship,[10] although Cott does record that spur-winged plovers are the birds that most often feed around basking crocodiles, and are tolerated by them.