The sound was discovered in 1616 by William Baffin and originally named Sir Thomas Smith's Bay after the English diplomat Sir Thomas Smyth. By the 1750s it regularly appeared on maps as Sir Thomas Smith's Sound, though no further exploration of the area would be recorded until John Ross' 1818 expedition. By this time it had begun to be known simply as Smith Sound.
Blake, W. 1999. "Glaciated Landscapes Along Smith Sound, Ellesmere Island, Canada and Greenland". Annals of Glaciology. 28: 40-46.
Elton, Charles S. Movements of Arctic Fox Populations in the Region of Baffin Bay and Smith Sound. The Polar Record. [Offprint], no. 37-38. Cambridge: University Press], 1949.
Grist, Alexander, and Marcos Zentilli. 2005. "The Thermal History of the Nares Strait, Kane Basin, and Smith Sound Region in Canada and Greenland: Constraints from Apatite Fission-Track and (U Th Sm)/He Dating". Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. 42: 1547-1569.
Kroeber, A. L. The Eskimo of Smith Sound. [New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1900.
Peary, Robert E. Northward Over the "Great Ice" A Narrative of Life and Work Along the Shores and Upon the Interior Ice-Cap of Northern Greenland in the Years 1886 and 1891-1897 : with a Description of the Little Tribe of Smith-Sound Eskimos, the Most Northerly Human Beings in the World, and an Account of the Discovery and Bringing Home of the "Saviksue," or Great Cape-York Meteorites. London: Methuen, 1898.