It is a common resident breeding bird in equatorial Africa from Senegal and Democratic Republic of Congo east to Ethiopia.

In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the yellow-crowned gonolek in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Senegal.

[2] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

[3] When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.

Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Lanius barbarus and cited Brisson's work.