Lamna cuspidata was named by Agassiz (1843).

It was recombined as Odontaspis cuspidata by Woodward (1889), Eastman (1901), Chapman and Pritchard (1904), Eastman (1904), Stromer (1910), Chapman and Cudmore (1924), Leriche (1942), Cappetta (1973), Ciobanu (1977), Case (1981); it was recombined as Odontaspis (Synodontaspis) cuspidata by Dartevelle and Casier (1943) and Schultz (1968); it was recombined as Sylvestrilamia cuspidata by Duplicate (1950); it was recombined as Carcharias (Odontaspis) cuspidata by Zbyszewski and Moitinho D'Almeida (1950); it was recombined as Synodontaspis cuspidata by Cappetta (1987), Nolf (1988); it was recombined as Eugomphodus cuspidatus by Karasawa (1989); it was recombined as Carcharias cuspidata by Purdy (1998), Baut and Génault (1999), Purdy et al. (2001), Antunes and Balbino (2003), Suarez et al. (2006), Marsili et al. (2007), Cook et al. (2010), Landini et al. (2017); it was recombined as Araloselachus cuspidatus by Reinecke and Radwanski (2015), Villafaña et al. (2020); it was recombined as Araloselachus cuspidata by Szabo et al. (2017); it was recombined as Carcharias cuspidatus by Nagao (1928), Rapp (1946), Pledge (1967), Kocsis (2007), Cicimurri and Knight (2009), Gille et al. (2010), Kent (2018), Hovestadt (2020), Landau et al. (2025), Cicimurri et al. (2025).