This small passerine bird is strongly migratory, and winters in tropical Africa, Arabia, and Pakistan.

The English ornithologist John Latham described the common whitethroat in 1783 in his A General Synopsis of Birds but introduced the binomial name Sylvia communis in the supplement to this work which was published in 1787.

[5] The common whitethroat is now placed in the genus Curruca that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein in 1802.

However, researchers found the presence of a white throat is an unreliable morphological marker for relationships in Curruca, and the greater and lesser whitethroats are not closely related.

In Europe, western and eastern populations of common whitethroats have contrasting moulting and pre-migratory fueling strategies to capitalise on food supplies before departing their breeding and non-breeding grounds.