Yeah, a bunch of languages don't strongly differentiate between all three of these.

For example, C++ differentiates between #1 and #2 (although it has woefully inadequate out-of-box support for #3).

Python (> 3) calls #1 bytes / bytearray, and calls #3 string. #2 is only really supported for FFI with C (i.e. ctypes.c_char_p and friends)