This is where you went wrong. Certificates don't certify anything. Designated individuals certify that something has taken place. They could record that certification on a brown paper bag. Certificates merely reflect what a properly designated person has certified and recorded.
What does an official certificate forged by an unauthorized person certify? It is a certificate, but a certificate is just a form until valid information is added by a person authorized to certify.
A certificate is the means by which a person certifies, makes a certification. Yeah, the person certifies. In the old days, the Middle Ages, which I study, word of mouth certification was preferred to written certificates because written certifications/certificates could be forged.
But that the certifier is a person doesn’t change the fact that calling document “A” a certificate and document “B” a certification is gibberish, linguistically. A is as much a certification as B is a certification and B is as much a certificate as A is a certificate and both of them are, yes, issued by a certifier.
Which is where this debate started.
I guess it’s time for it to end. You keep moving the goalposts around the field.