 The Oʻahu ʻamakihi was first named by Andrew Bloxam (as "Nectarina flava").He saw it and collected specimens from Oʻahu while in the Hawaiian Islands in 1825 as the naturalist on board HMS "Blonde".The species was formerly placed in the genus "Hemignathus" but was assigned to "Chlorodrepanis" based on the phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences.