Hi Andrew

In the case of the third class -- semantic similarity -- I first of all deny the premise.  I claim that _no_ DNS label has a meaning.  It is possible (indeed likely) that some people use labels as though they had meaning, but that is quite a different matter from the labels actually having such meaning.  That you might attribute a meaning to a given label could well mean that you understand it to have the same meaning as some other label.  But that is not the same as deciding that the label has that meaning in itself -- for instance, the same pair might not be related for me.  How would one determine this?  What authority would one depend on?  And how is this to be determined algorithmically?  Moreover, given that the tradition in the DNS runs exactly counter to this -- traditionally, the labels "color" and "colour" are simply different labels, period -- what justification is there for including this type of similarity in the work of the teams?

I would like to point out (considering that this group deals with IDN TLDs issues) that the FIRST requirement for IDN gTLD application in gTLD Application Guidebook states as the following:

“Meaning or restatement of string in English. The applicant will provide a short description of what the string would mean or represent in English.”

I think it is safe to claim that TLDs do have meaning _associated to them_ (and ICANN could very well be the authority if needs to be). I am not sure if semantically similar strings are actually variant strings the way we define variant strings, but I agree with Vladimir that on a conceptual level this is a case of similarity and will need to be addressed.

Best Regards,

Alexey