Deployment Pipeline AAS Model Name Error

I encountered the following error while deploying from the dev stage of my pipeline (which is connected to our Dev AAS cube) to the Test stage of our deployment pipeline which has a rule created on it to switch the connection from Dev to our Prod AAS cube : "Couldn't load the model schema associated with this report"

Please note, different from the "Couldn't load the schema for the database model" error which is a permissions/licensing error

I confirmed that this error is related to the issue posted here and that if the Model Name is different between sources, the deployment pipeline will not function: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Deployment-Pipelines-Change-datasource-Cannot-load-model/m-p/1605870/thread-id/118278  . Indeed my Model Names (not cube names, not bim file names, just the Model Names) are different between the 2 cube sources -  I was not aware the Model Names could be different or how/when they got that way!  Side Note: I use the BISM Normalizer to deploy from Visual Studio and it has never mentioned that there is a dicrepancy between the Model Names... 

I identified how to unify the names, thanks to the comment section found here: https://www.purplefrogsystems.com/blog/2014/02/renaming-an-ssas-tabular-model/  with a note of caution that other reports connected to the updated model will need to have their connections refreshed to navigate to the new Model Name (UPDATE: I actually didn't encounter any need to refresh any connections for reports originally connected to the 'wrong' Model Name after I updated the Model Name in Dev so that both Dev and Prod were unified - it appears to only be a problem with switching those connection properties via the conection rules in Deployment Pipelines).

However, I wanted to confirm that Model Names DO have to be the same between cube sources, or is there an issue with my pipeline specifically? We have been deploying this cube for years without running into issues with the model name, always deploying changes from Dev up to Prod.  We just started using Deployment Pipelines and I was caught off guard by this issue and want to make sure we plan for avoiding it in the future if it really is a 'thing'.
Thanks for your feedback!  If this really is a 'thing' I will be posting an idea to allow for changing between model names in the Deployment Pipeline connection rules 😉