The "M" is just a package, a grouping in the structure of your code.

I agree there is no "a model", it should be "a record" or "a DTO" or "a repository" (which contains the queries to a particular table), or "a service" (that contains logic that calls several repositories).

The idea of having "a model" it closely coupled with the us of ORMs (which are an anti-pattern IMHO). They provide "models" or "entities" that try to be too much (wrap over a db record, contain logic, can back a form submission -- breaking the single responsibility principle on all counts).

I feel like "clean architecture" is trying to fix this, but only makes it worse.