 German naturalist Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius formally described the red Irish lord in 1811 as "Cottus hemilepidotus", from material collected off Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Kamchatka Peninsula.The species (and genus) name is derived from the Ancient Greek words "hemi" "half", "lepis" "scale", and "ous, otis" "ear".The genus was erected in 1829 by French zoologist Georges Cuvier in the second edition of his work "Le Règne Animal".