There is no reason not to use references in this case.
If the reference is only from listB to listA and not vice versa, you won't risk any cleanup problems as well.
PS: there is no other way than actually using references in some way at some point. Question is only if you want to do it your way which is efficient or doing it in a really slow way by saving some kind of ID / Name and search for that in listA
If the reference is only from listB to listA and not vice versa, you won't risk any cleanup problems as well.
PS: there is no other way than actually using references in some way at some point. Question is only if you want to do it your way which is efficient or doing it in a really slow way by saving some kind of ID / Name and search for that in listA