1688. Based on an account by Georg Eberhard Rumphius (1705), who had called the animal "Cancer crumenatus", Carl Linnaeus (1767) named the species Cancer latro, from the Latin latro, meaning "robber". The genus Birgus was erected in 1816 by William Elford Leach, containing only Linnaeus' Cancer latro, which was thus renamed Birgus latro.

Birgus is classified in the family