In naming the species, Née compared it to a species illustrated in Leonard Plukenet’s "Phytographia" under the descriptive name “Ilex folio agrifolii americana, forte agria, vel aquifolia glandifera” which Plukenet had compared, in his "Almagestum botanicum", to Luigi Anguillara’s “Agrifolia glandifera,” the noun “Agrifolia” being a Medieval Latin form of “Aquifolium” meaning a holly or holly-leaved oak, and related to the Modern Italian “Agrifoglio,” meaning “holly.”