The blue-rumped pitta was
described by the English naturalist
Robert George Wardlaw-Ramsay in 1881 from a specimen collected in
Saigon,
Cochinchina. He introduced the
binomial name Pitta (Hydrornis) soror with
Hydrornis as a subgenus. The
specific epithet soror is Latin for "sister" (that is "closely related"). Five
subspecies are recognised: •
H. s. tonkinensis (
Delacour, 1927) – south China and north Vietnam •
H. s. douglasi (
Ogilvie-Grant, 1910) –
Hainan island (off southeast China) •
H. s. petersi (Delacour, 1934) – central Laos and north central Vietnam •
H. s. soror (Wardlaw-Ramsay, RG, 1881) – south Laos and central and south Vietnam •
H. s. flynnstonei (Rozendaal, 1993) – east Thailand and south Cambodia ==References==