That's nitpicking. Pass-by-reference is defined by its semantics, not by an implementation that avoids copying anything.
There is no such thing as a "reference object" in C++ that you could pass by value. References may be implemented using pointers under the hood and those pointers may be copied, but on a semantic level references themselves are not objects that you can copy or take the address of (contrary to pointers).
There is no such thing as a "reference object" in C++ that you could pass by value. References may be implemented using pointers under the hood and those pointers may be copied, but on a semantic level references themselves are not objects that you can copy or take the address of (contrary to pointers).