In regards to your answer you used the word “need” in your question. Why is “representation” called a “representation”, and that is exactly the word and the computer-science concept that used in REST, which stands for “Representational State Transfer”.

Let’s say we have a profile (for example, let’s say we have a photo); this is a “profile”. One “representation” of this profile is a bunch of HTML with embedded images that is viewable through a web browser, as a UI component. I know some people think this as the profile, but in reality, the profile is a row in a database table, and the HTML page is a representation of this profile. When you check out the HTML page at the profile page, what’s your information about this page? If a person upgrades their profile, then requests HTML, the representation will be improved to match the underlying data. The programming concept of a representation already has the concept of synchronization built in. Gotta represent to yo. Too strong.

How many different representations are there in a Java string that calls JSON. What was the object of the data or it contains the same data?

So the terminology you are looking for could be “object” and its “representations”.