The species B. goodwini is named by Jack Horner after Mark Goodwin, a preparator of the University of California at Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology, who discovered the type specimen. The genus Brachylophosaurus and its type species B.canadensis were originally described by Charles M. Sternberg in 1953 -it was one of the few dinosaurs to be described during the 1950s - from the Judith River Formation (then called the Oldman Formation) of Alberta, which is famous fot its marvelously preserved Late Cretaceous dinosaurs. 

Horner's new species, however, is from the Judith River Formation of Montana, which is notorious for its fragmentary and problematical dinosaur remains. The type specimen of B. goodwini is a partial skull, and fortunately enough of it exists that it can be referred with some confidence to the genus Brachylophosaurus.