Johannes Peter Müller
The first scientific description of the banded houndshark was authored by German biologists Johannes Peter Müller and Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle, based on a dried specimen from Japan, in their 1838–41 "Systematische Beschreibung der Plagiostomen". They gave it the specific epithet "scyllium", derived from the Ancient Greek "skylion" ("dogfish"), and placed it in the genus "Triakis". Within the genus, it is placed in the subgenus "Triakis" along with the leopard shark ("T. "("Triakis")" semifasciata").