During the 1880s, the gentleman farmer Alfred Nicholson Leeds collected large fish fossils from loam pits near Peterborough, England. In May 1886 these were inspected by John Whitaker Hulke, who in 1887 partially reported them as the back plates of the stegosaurian "Omosaurus". On 22 August 1888, the American dinosaur expert Professor Othniel Charles Marsh visited Leeds' farm at Eyebury and quickly concluded that the presumed dinosaurian armour in fact represented the skull bones of a giant fish. Within two weeks British fish expert Arthur Smith Woodward examined the specimens and began to prepare a formal description published in 1889. In it he named the species "Leedsichthys problematicus". The generic name "Leedsichthys" means "Leeds' fish", from Greek ἰχθύς, "ichthys", "fish". The fossils found by Leeds gave the fish the specific epithet "problematicus" because the remains were so fragmented that they were extremely hard to recognize and interpret. After a second publication in 1889, objections were raised against the perceived "barbaric" nature of the generic name, which simply attached a non-Latinised British family name to a Classical Greek word. Woodward therefore in 1890 changed the genus name to "Leedsia", resulting in a "Leedsia problematica". However, by modern standards this is a non-valid junior synonym.