The etymology of the genus name has been presumed—initially in The Yosemite Book by Josiah Whitney in 1868[1]—to be in honor of Sequoyah (1767–1843), who was the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary.[2] An etymological study published in 2012, however, concluded that the name was more likely to have originated from the Latin sequi (meaning to follow) since the number of seeds per cone in the newly-classified genus fell in mathematical sequence with the other four genera in the suborder.[3]