synonym creation syntaxis and tfs source control

 Hi all, 

I can see synonym creation code in tfs source control: 

Create Synonym [schema1].[name1] For [$(database1)].[schema2].[name2]

Tried to run this code, it returned no error, but when I tried to run select query 

Select * From [schema1].[name1] 

it returned error 'Synonym ... referes to an invalid object'.

Then I dropped mentioned synonym and re-created it as 

Create Synonym [schema1].[name1] For [database1].[schema2].[name2]

Then select query worked well.

Please, could someone explain me why [$(database1)] syntaxis was used in version control? It doesn't look like typo, because it is used in many places in the code.