Why do you need to use the reference operator to get the class name?

Question

Kotlin

I know that the reference operator is used as a function pointer

val b = ::a
//затем функцию а можно вызывать через 
b()

But why is this operator used in conjunction with the this keyword to get the name of a class?
this::class

in Java this is done simply through a dot and the getClass() method.