Wikipedia says
While "pointer" has been used to refer to references in general, it more properly applies to data structures whose interface explicitly allows the pointer to be manipulated (arithmetically via pointer arithmetic) as a memory address...
So, while you are correct that there is a subtle difference between those words, in a language where low-level pointers don't exist it should be obvious that pointer is an alias for reference
But thanks for the info, I wasn't really aware of the distinction
