git merge remote branch says "Merge commit ..."?

I noticed that if I do 'git merge origin/branch' that the log message
says (using --log):

Merge commit 'origin/branch'

   * commit 'origin/branch':
     Fixed some bug.

If I do the same thing from a local tracking branch of origin/branch, it says:

Merge branch 'branch'

   * branch:
     Fixed some bug.

Is it expected that it say "commit" instead of "branch" when the
branch is not a local tracking branch? I sometimes merge from remote
branches when I don't need to do anything with that branch locally
(e.g. I already did the work on another computer and I'm just merging
the result into my test machine before I push to the shared server).