This may be wasted explanation of something you already understand, but
the importance you seem to attach to the variable name troubles me.

For synchronization, wait, and notify, it is VERY important to keep
clear about the distinction between a reference variable and the object
it references.

You can have two distinct reference variables that refer to the same
object. For example:

class Demo{
  List x = new ArrayList();
  List y = x;
  void methodA(){
    synchronized(x){...}
  }
  void methodB(){
    synchronized(y){...}
  }
}

If those are the only assignments to x and y then the synchronized
blocks in methodA and methodB, running in the same Demo instance, would
exclude each other.

Now suppose I create two instances of Demo:

Demo d1 = new Demo();
Demo d2 = new Demo();

d1.methodA and d2.methodA could run at the same time in different
threads, because d1.x and d2.x refer to different objects.

Patricia