Well, it seems then that the alias has to be string (makes sense!), which is processed differently from a number.
There is another reason why I always use quotes when giving an alias in square brackets: When the alias contains commas, it will split up if not in quotes, like so:
If I’m not mistaken, aliases: [one, two, three]
gives these three aliases: „one“, „ two“, and „ three“,
whereas aliases: [“one, two, three”]
gives just one alias, viz. “one, two, three”