Odobenus was named by Brisson (1762) [Sepkoski's age data: T Plio R Sepkoski's reference number: 746 conserved by the ICZN in Opinion 467 (May 1957)]. It is extant. It is the type genus of Odobenina.

It was synonymized subjectively with Rosmarus by Gill (1866); it was corrected as Odobaenus by Allen (1880); it was synonymized subjectively with Trichechus by Trouessart (1898) and Trouessart (1904).

It was assigned to Odobaenidae by Allen (1880) and Carroll (1988); to Odobenina by McKenna and Bell (1997); to Carnivora by Sepkoski (2002); to Odobeninae by Mitchell (1968), Repenning and Tedford (1977), Fay (1985), Barnes (1989), Horikawa (1995), Berta (2002), Deméré et al. (2003), Kohno (2006), Berta (2009), Boessenecker and Churchill (2013), Berta (2017) and Berta et al. (2018); to Odobenini by Deméré (1994), Magallanes et al. (2018) and Biewer et al. (2020); and to Odobenidae by Hay (1902), Palmer (1904), Hay (1930), Scheffer and Rice (1963), Wilson (1967), Kurten and Anderson (1980), Tomida (1989), Riedman (1990), Harington and Beard (1992), Berta (2018) and Ponomarev et al. (2023).