Tag Synonym somewhat acting like real tag

Question

Today, after another user pointed out to me a discrepancy with a tag that was supposed to be synonymed I dug a little deeper and saw what seemed to be an underlying problem, and not sure if it's site-specific or not.

Here is the master tag snapshot:

Here is what you see if while creating a question you type 'opening' in tag hint box:

Notice how it still shows three questions as having the tag that was synonymed, and the sum total equals the number on the tag page.. Here is the snapshot of the 'openings' tag page:

I checked on Stack Overflow and found that when bringing up a tag synonym, it automatically only brings up the master tag.

Is this because it's a beta site. Is there a deeper explanation, and should it be this way?

Answer 1

This only happens when a synonymized tag hasn't yet been merged into its master tag, because just creating a synonym does not automatically merge all the questions into the master. While it still has questions which actually have the tag attached to it, it will continue to appear in the suggested tags box as if it were an actual tag.

You can either find the three questions which are still tagged with opening and move them to tag openings to kill off the synonymized tag or, for larger tags, get a moderator to perform the merge. Once that's done, it will stop appearing as a separate tag and only appear as a synonym below the master tag.