The first scientific description of the common thresher, as Squalus vulpinus, was written by French naturalist Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre in the 1788 Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique des trois règnes de la nature.[4] In 1810, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque described Alopias macrourus from a thresher shark caught off Sicily. Later authors recognized the genus Alopias as valid, while synonymizing A. macrourus with S. vulpinus, thus the common thresher's scientific name became Alopias vulpinus.[2]