[umvi]

A branch is more accurately a text pointer pointing to a single commit

[TeMPOraL]

And this is a crucial point. To understand git, you need to understand data structures strung from pointers. Branch then being a [pointer to a] single commit makes perfect sense, just like a linked list being a pointer to the first element makes perfect sense.

[rswail]

You could even call it a "reference", or a "ref" for short :)