The bug
Buckets which get modified in a furnace lose their NBT data. Lava buckets can be used as fuel and turn into empty buckets and empty buckets can be used to collect the water when drying a sponge.
How to reproduce
Place a furnace and put a smeltable item in it
Put a named lava bucket as fuel in it
/give @p minecraft:lava_bucket{display:{Name:"{\"text\":\"Named Lava Bucket\"}"}}
Hover over the created empty bucket
→ ❌ You will see that it has no name anymore
Code analysis
Based on 1.11.2 decompiled using MCP 9.35 rc1
The methods net.minecraft.tileentity.TileEntityFurnace.update()
(lava bucket → empty bucket) and net.minecraft.tileentity.TileEntityFurnace.smeltItem()
(empty bucket → water bucket) create a new item stack.
Related issues
Attachments
Comments

Can confirm for MC 1.12.1.
Can confirm in 20w51a.
Can confirm in 21w06a.
Can confirm in 1.16.5 and 21w08b.
Video attached.
Can confirm in 1.17.
Can confirm in 1.19.
Can confirm in 1.19.2 and 22w42a.

Can confirm in 1.21 Pre-Release 1