[jacobsimon]

Yep! Trees, tree structures, tree diagrams have been regularly in use since the 1700s as a way of defining relationships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_structure

There’s also a pretty large link between the formal representation of language using syntax trees, which was being formalized by linguists and by programming language developers around the same time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_language?wprov=sfti1