 The species was first formally described by the botanists Joseph Maiden and William Blakely in 1927 as part of the work "Descriptions of fifty new species and six varieties of western and northern Australian Acacias, and notes on four other species" as published in the "Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia".It was reclassified as "Racosperma eriopodum" by Leslie Pedley in 2003 then transferred back to genus "Acacia" in 2006.The specific epithet is derived from the Greek "erio-" meaning "wool" and "-poda" meaning "foot" in reference to the short hairy pedicels.