reflog it a tool to show you the history of a given ref - if you don't give it any, it defaults to HEAD. It seems to me like "reflog" is the perfect name for it and I don't see how "commitlog" would be relevant to what it does.
Did you confuse "refs" (references) with "revs" (revisions)?
No, I was going based off the mental model I replied to:
> A commit is an immutable object. Whereas a ref is a pointer, literally a place on disk (a regular file) that holds an address (plaintext SHA) to the latest point in a logical chain of commits.
Reflog shows you the immutable commit SHA and the HEAD@{N} ref. I've only ever used it to get back to a commit I've lost, never by ref, so to me it's a commitlog.
HEAD is a ref just like any other. What you're looking at after typing `git reflog` is the history of things HEAD has pointed to - it's HEAD's log. Refs don't necessarily have to point to commits, they can point to other objects too.
HEAD@{<N>} is not a ref - it's a rev in <ref>@{<N>} form that means "N positions back in ref's history" (see `man gitrevisions` for more rev forms).
> never by ref
When you look at reflog's output, you've already dereferenced these commits by the given ref and its history.
Did you confuse "refs" (references) with "revs" (revisions)?