The chestnut-naped spurfowl was described in 1888 by the Italian zoologist Tommaso Salvadori based on a specimen collected near Lago Ciar-Ciar (now Haro Ch'erch'er Hayk') in the Ahmar Mountains of central Ethiopia. He coined the binomial name Francolinus castaneicollis. The species is now placed in the genus Pternistis that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Georg Wagler in 1832. The specific epithet castaneicollis combines the Latin castaneus meaning chestnut-brown and the Modern Latin -collis meaning necked. The chestnut-naped spurfowl is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.