The genus name derives from the Latin word for "shrew" (-sorex), combined with a reference to the Uinta Mountains where the holotype fossils were discovered.

The hardness of their enamel allowed Uintasorex teeth to endure long enough after death to undergo fossilization, and much of what is known about the genus comes from dental remains.

is based on a collection of tiny Uintasorex teeth recovered from the Green River Formation in Utah which went uncatalogued in the archives of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History until they were rediscovered and described by Charles L. Gazin in 1958.

Uintasorex was described by William Diller Matthew in 1909 and assigned to Apatemyidae because of its resemblance to Apatemys, Phenacolemur, Trogolemur, and some other fossil tarsiers.

[4] The suggestion that Uintasorex had been a microsyopid was first privately put forward by Donald E. Russell in 1965, and the idea that the species represented a distinct family from the other taxa it was being grouped received its first mention as a footnote in a 1958 paper by Charles L. Gazin.