International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) in Opinion 91 included Genus Canis on its Official Lists and Indexes of Names in Zoology. In 1955, the ICZN's Direction 22 added Canis familiaris as the type species for genus Canis to the official list.

The cladogram below is based on the DNA phylogeny of Lindblad-Toh et al. (2005), modified to incorporate