In 1758, the dog conch was formally described and named Strombus canarium by Swedish naturalist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, who originated the system of binomial nomenclature.
The taxon Laevistrombus was introduced in the literature as a subgenus of Strombus by Tetsuaki Kira (1955) in the third printing of the 1st edition of Coloured Illustrations of the Shells of Japan.