 This name was first used by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 but was not intended as a scientific name.The name is a reference to the Mascarene Islands, which were themselves named after their Portuguese discoverer, Pedro Mascarenhas.Early writers claimed the Mascarene parrot was found on Madagascar, an idea that led the French naturalist René Primevère Lesson to coin the junior synonym "Mascarinus madagascariensis" in 1831.