What I meant was that in Classic, the name of a piece of a gear was a unique identifier that fully specified the gear piece: ilevel, stats, any special powers, and appearance.
In retail, either the vast majority or possibly 100% of gear pieces are not fully specified by name alone. Most can have a wide range of ilevel, are eligible for random upgrades like tertiary stats or gem slot, can roll a random corruption, etc. So what you’re left with is mostly the name being an appearance. Not at all the same thing.