In 1760 the French zoologist
Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the crested drongo in his
Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Madagascar. He used the French name
Le grand gobe-mouche noir hupé de Madagascar and the Latin
Muscicapa Madagascariensis nigra major cristata. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the
binomial system and are not recognised by the
International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 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. The
specific name forficatus is
Neo-Latin for "scissor-shaped". This species is now placed in the
genus Dicrurus that was introduced by French ornithologist
Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816. Two
subspecies are recognised: •
D. f. forficatus (
Linnaeus, 1766) – Madagascar and nearby islands •
D. f. potior (
Bangs & T E Penard, 1922) – island of
Anjouan,
Comoros The common name of
drongo, now applied to all members of the family
Dicruridae, was originally a
Malagasy word from the
Betsimisaraka dialect; more commonly it is called
railovy in Malagasy. ==Description==