 Specimens of B. menziesii were first collected by the botanist Charles Fraser during Captain (later Admiral Sir) James Stirling's March 1827 exploration of the Swan River. The following year, Alexander Macleay sent some of Fraser's specimens to Robert Brown. Brown formally published the species in his 1830 Supplementum Primum Prodromi Florae Novae Hollandiae, giving it the specific epithet in honor of Archibald Menzies, surgeon-naturalist on the HMS Discovery under George Vancouver, who discovered King George Sound in 1791. Thus the species' full name is Banksia menziesii R.Br. Neither Brown nor Menzies ever saw the plant growing.
