Is the Caspian Sea a Sea or a Lake?

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I have some facination with bodies of water. I have researched the Caspian Sea, which is considerd two things, 1)The World's Only Inland Sea and 2)The Largest Lake in the World. The Caspian is brackish but I heard it has some oceanography features meaning the floor of the Caspian is like an ocean. And the big waves and the salt and going on the beach makes someone feels that they are in the Atlantic Ocean.
But it is not as salty as the world seas since the Caspian is brackish and it is COMPLETLY landlocked with a long inderect connection from the world's seas to the Caspian via the Volga canal systems in Russia. In another view, it is a humongous lake and it was named the Caspian Sea because acient people thought it was the Ocean just as how the Miami Indians around Lake Okeechobee called the big lake "Okeechobee", meaning big water in the native Miami language since they also saw it as like an Ocean i the same way the acient persians saw the Caspian. The world was extremely huge to them back then.
It is also a debate since the shore countries see the Caspian as a potential for a lot of oil. Wether the Caspian is called a lake or a sea officially makes a big difference because especially with Iran and Russia, the other countries that border the Caspian do not have such healthy relationships with these countries. So it's all mixed with the terms and namings. Is the Caspian Sea Really as Sea? Or is it a humongous brackish lake?

I think it really comes down to the etymology used. Example, The Great Salt Lake in Utah is called a lake, even though it is much saltier than any of the oceans. The Dead Sea OTOH is much smaller than the Great Salt Lake, yet it is still regarded as a Sea due to salinity which is even greater than that of the Great Salt Lake. Furthermore, The Salton Sea in California is much the same as the Great Salt Lake, albeit a great deal smaller, yet it was named a 'sea'.