 He gave it the specific epithet "leiodon", from the Greek "leios" meaning "smooth", and "odon" meaning "tooth".This species was known only by the single specimen until 2008, when fishery surveys in Kuwait uncovered several more specimens.Based on morphology, Leonard Compagno in 1988 tentatively grouped the smoothtooth blacktip shark with the spinner shark ("C. brevipinna"), the blacktip shark ("C. limbatus"), the graceful shark ("C. amblyrhynchoides"), and the finetooth shark ("C. isodon").