The violet-eared waxbill was formally described in 1766 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Fringilla granatina.

[2] Linnaeus took the specific epithet from the earlier description by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson who in 1760 had used the French name Le Grenadin and the Latin Granatinus, meaning "grenadier" in English.

This was an error originally introduced by the English naturalist George Edwards in 1743 who had believed that his specimen had come from Brazil.

[6][7][8] The violet-eared waxbill is now placed in the genus Granatina that was introduced in 1890 by the English ornithologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe.

[10] It is found in subtropical/ tropical (lowland) dry shrubland and savanna habitats in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.