The knowledge of South Africa's aloes is deeply intertwined with the history of the land. From early Portuguese explorers like Bartholomew Dias and Vasco da Gama in the late 1400s to the establishment of the Dutch settlements in the 1600s and during countless inland expeditions by legendary travellers, plants were being collected and described, the land was "opened up" and amongst other things the present day knowledge of the genus Aloe was being formulated. Hendrick Bernard Oldenland was Superintendent of the Company Gardens at the Cape in 1695. He was an accomplished botanist and collected and dried specimens of a large number of South African plants. A. commixta is number 14 in Oldenland's "Kruid Boek" (herbarium) and was one of the first aloes cultivated in the Dutch East India Company's Garden at the Cape. Today there are approximately 126 aloe species known in South Africa. The exact derivation of the word aloe is unclear. It is suggested, however, that it comes from the Arabic alloch or alloeh, describing species which were used medicinally. It may have also been derived from the Greek aloë denoting the dried juice of the aloe leaves.

In 2013 the genus Aloe was revised and split into a number of genera, including Aloiampelos. This name means ‘climbing aloe’, from Aloe and the Greek word, ampelos, meaning ‘climbing plant’, referring to the climbing or rambling habit of this group of aloes. The species name commixta is from the Latin commisceo and means 'mixed together', perhaps referring to the tangled mixed up stems of this sprawling plant.