How do you know which Windows came first: XP, ME, Vista, 98, 10?
I mean even when Apple uses sequential, numerical names you can't always answer the question of which came first: the iPhone 8 and iPhone X (10) were announced ~simultaneously! And there wasn't even a 9!
My point is it really doesn't matter which big cat or California landmark came first. It's trivial to find out if you want to, but it's not terribly important to encode that in the name you're using to identify your product.
Every software vendor of any significant size knows to use version numbers of macOS, not just marketing names of macOS, when communicating that kind of information.
Here are some random examples taken from some of the software that I use on my systems.
