Grounds exist for accepting that the previously unrecognised paratypes of Zosterops (palpebrosus) auriventer Hume in Hume & Davison, 1878, from a population inhabiting the coastal lowlands of the Malacca Straits, are all still held by the Natural History Museum, Tring, and that the overall type series is a taxonomic composite. Comparative morphology and a re-reading of original collecting details combine to revise Hume's identification of his paratypes. Their population is re-named and its geographical range redefined, with suggested outcomes for species limits. The term ‘continental’ here includes the islands of South-East Asian shelf waters, i.e., as far the Greater Sundas and their satellites.