Are Aya and Maya Brea (of Parasite Eve) named after the La Brea tar pits?

The PE1 level design makes total sense if someone only ever went to the tar pit museum in LA and saw the skeletons and then only read a (room-by-room) description of the Natural History Museum in NYC

Kinda like how Silent Hill was a Japanese take on New England horror and it all looked like small town PNW