Carcharias was named by Rafinesque (1810). It is extant.

It was reranked as Squalus (Carcharias) by Richardson (1836).

It was assigned to Plagiostomi by Agassiz (1835); to Squalus by Richardson (1836); to Squalidae by Gibbes (1847); to Carchariinae by Hay (1902); to Carcharidae by Alessandri (1896), Bohm (1926) and Arambourg (1927); to Odontaspidae by Yabe and Hirayama (1998), Bogan and Agnolin (2010) and Hastings and Dooley (2017); to Odontaspididae by Case (1991), Siverson (1992), Long (1992), Biddle (1993), Siverson (1996), Siverson (1997), Kriwet (1999), Cappetta and Corral (1999), Cappetta and Case (1999), Long and Stilwell (2000), Mors et al. (2000), Zalmout and Mustafa (2001), Donovan and Gunter (2001), Purdy et al. (2001), Cicimurri (2003), Antunes and Balbino (2003), Vicens and Rodríguez-Perea (2003), Compagno (2005), Cappetta and Nolf (2005), Tabuce et al. (2005), Shimada et al. (2006), Cahuzac et al. (2007), Kocsis (2007), Marsili et al. (2007), Shimada and Martin (2008), Cicimurri and Knight (2009), Otero et al. (2013), Guinot et al. (2013), Reinecke and Radwanski (2015), Corral et al. (2016), Szabo et al. (2017), Kent (2018), Cappetta et al. (2019), Cantalice et al. (2019), Landini et al. (2019) and Villafaña et al. (2020); and to Carchariidae by Woodward (1889), Chapman and Pritchard (1904), Eastman (1904), Eastman (1908), Jordan and Gilbert (1919), Jordan and Hanibal (1923), Chapman and Cudmore (1924), Nagao (1928), David (1943), Rapp (1946), Jordan (1963), Miller (1967), Cvancara and Hoganson (1993), Guinot et al. (2023) and Feichtinger et al. (2024).