This species of fire daisy was first described by the famous Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1771 as Cineraria purpurata, based on a herbarium specimen from Caput Bonae Spei [Cape of Good Hope], a term then used for the larger Cape Region, that was sent to him by the governor of the Dutch Cape Colony between 1751 and 1771, Ryk Tulbagh. The description was however too general to determine without doubt which plant species it concerned, and Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in 1836, listed it as an inadequately known species. De Candolle in 1836, also described Mairia hirsuta based on four collections from the Langeberg to the northwest of Swellendam at Puspasvalei, Voormansbosch, Duivelsbosch and the banks of the Keurbooms River made by Christian Friedrich Ecklon and Karl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher. In 1891, Otto Kuntze reassigned it, making the combination Zyrphelis hirsuta. The name Cineraria purpurata is disregarded from that time on, until Glynis Cron, Kevin Balkwill and Eric B. Knox identify a lectotype and subsequently exclude the species from Cineraria, in their revision of that genus in 2006. In 2011, Santiago Ortiz and Ulrike Zinnecker-Wiegand revised the genera Mairia, Gymnostephium and Zyrphelis, and reinstated M. hirsuta. John Manning synonymised M. hirsuta and Cineraria purpurata in 2016, proposing the new combination Mairia purpurata. This has however not yet gained wide acceptance. The species is not synonymous with Gymnostephium hirsutum, described by Christian Friedrich Lessing in 1832.