Examination of the original description of Thrissina malabarica (Bloch, 1795), a name previously applied to an Indian Ocean species with a distinctly deep body, revealed that the former nominal species was actually a senior synonym of Thrissina hamiltonii (Gray, 1835), a slender-bodied Indo-West Pacific species. The applicable name for the species previously treated as T. malabarica is Thrissina cuvierii (Swainson, 1839). To stabilize the taxonomic status of these three nominal species, a neotype for T. cuvierii is designated. In addition, Thrissina aurora, new species, is described from a specimen collected from the Andaman Sea near Phuket, Thailand. Although both the new species and T. cuvierii share a deep body, the former is distinguished by lower counts of gill rakers and anal-fin rays than the latter. The mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) haplotype network of 11 specimens of T. cuvierii and three specimens (including the holotype) of T. aurora, new species, revealed 22 nucleotide differences between the two species, corresponding to 3.4% mean uncorrected genetic distance.