Why do device drivers have different names than the hardware they support?

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Stephen Tashi
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Before the age of personal computers, I had great respect for technical documentation. It was hard copy, of course. Sometimes there were typos or errors, but, in general it could be trusted. If I wanted a spare part for a device and it had a metal plate that said "Wazno Bliffer 990-23B", I could write a letter or make a phone call to the company and talk to them about a "Wazno Bliffer 990-23B".

Enter the computer age. If I buy a product that says it is a "Wazno Bliffer 990-23B" and put it on a computer, the operating system will show it as something with another name- like a "TenzCorp 895.7 C". If I go to a website and look for a driver for the device, the name of the driver probably won't be something like "WaznoBliffer-1.2" or "TeznCorp-1.2". It will have a name like "Verfig-1.2". It seems to me that there is much pseudo-precision in the way things are designated nowadays. Perhaps people make up complicated sounding names as "marketing tool" to portray products and companies as highly advanced.
 

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Isn't it more like brand proliferation ... drivers go to "chipset", the same chips get used in the same way under a lot of different product names.
Yet another reason engineering generally does not see eye to eye with marketing.
 
Could it be it's just a matter of equivalent products? I.e.: The place you buy the replacement from doesn't actually carry the original Wazno Bliffer, they only carry the equivalent Tenzcorp product?