The common names are even more confusing, "like myriad footprints criss-crossing in the snow and about as easy to disentangle."

[1] The genus Leucocarbo was introduced in 1856 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte.

[2] He did not specify a type species but this was designated as the guanay cormorant by William Ogilvie-Grant in 1898.

[3][4] The name Leucocarbo combines the Ancient Greek leukos meaning "white" with the genus name Carbo introduced by Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1799.

[5] A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that Leucocarbo is sister to the American cormorants in the genus Nannopterum; the genera split between 6.7 - 8.0 million years ago.