GeographicalName subtypes skos:Concept

[DieterDePaepe]

GeographicalName is currently defined as:

gn:GeographicalName  a   owl:Class ;
        rdfs:subClassOf  skos:Concept ;
        skos:definition  "Proper noun applied to a real world entity."@en .

I believe this subclassing is done to have compatibility with locn:geographicName (see the last sentence in the comment).

locn:geographicName a rdf:Property ;
    rdfs:label "geographic name"@en ;
    rdfs:comment """
A geographic name is a proper noun applied to a spatial object. Taking the example used in the relevant INSPIRE data specification (page 18), the following are all valid geographic names for the Greek capital:
...
For INSPIRE-conformant data, provide the metadata for the geographic name using a skos:Concept as a datatype."""@en ;

However, RDF defines the term "datatype" as the datatype of a literal, of which xsd:string is an example. As such, I always assumed geographicname would be used as follows:

ex:myAdminUnitName ad:name "Brussels"^^ex:brusselsDT.

ex:brusselsDT a rdfs:Datatype ;
  rdfs:subClassOf rdfs:Literal ;
  gn:pronunciation "brʌs(ə)lz".

I am not sure if this is what core location originally intended, but it would be a more unified way since there is no mixup of GeographicalName as literal and as non-literal.