I like the approach too: You may think of using entities along the Linked Data mantra to compare not only by characters, but with the complete meaning of the t

I like the approach too: You may think of using entities along the Linked Data mantra to compare not only by characters, but with the complete meaning of the term. (e.g. compare "Palmyra" with http://dbpedia.org/page/Palmyra http://dbpedia.org/page/Palmyra ) In the Linked Data world you can use the SKOS vocabulary to define/store relationships like the ones you mentioned. ( http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/ http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/ ) To ease the task on linguistic checks you may check the WordNet datasource. ( http://wordnet.princeton.edu/ http://wordnet.princeton.edu/ )