Domain names get international flavor
Summary
The European Commission has introduced the use of non-Roman characters in .eu domain names.
Topics
The European Commission has introduced the use of non-Roman characters in .eu domain names, allowing the names to incorporate characters from all twenty-three official languages of the European Union for the first time.
The introduction of internationalized domain names (IDNs) means domain names can include accented accented characters such as 'ç', commonly used in Portuguese and Catalan, and 'ñ', as used in Spanish and Basque, as well as names written in Greek or Cyrillic characters, the Commission said on Thursday.
"Many internet users will come from countries where most languages are not based on the 'a to z' Latin script and they will naturally want to use their own scripts," said Viviane Reding, the EU's Information Society Commissioner, in a statement on Thursday. "The launch of international domain names under .eu will respond even better to the needs of a multilingual and multicultural Europe."
For more, read "EU gets internationalized domain names" on ZDNet UK.
Talkback Most Recent of 7 Talkback(s)
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John Zern14th Dec 2009 -
RE: Domain names get international flavor
Nothing wrong with that, they just won't be able to get emails from western companies and organisations.
But this is a good thing as the more intelligent amongst them will use our characters, and be part of the world, where as the less intelligent will disappear off the radar.
Yes, I go along with that.
ampers@...14th Dec 2009 -
Western?
"Western" ?!
I think you'll find that that adjective isn't just a description of the USA, but applies to Europe too where accented characters are common.
I do agree though that it's a pointless exercise - anyone who hasn't got those characters on their keyboard won't be able to type in their URL or email address without considerable effort - Effort being something most users will avoid.
alec.wood@...21st Dec 2009 -
RE: Domain names get international flavor
That will be useful for international trade.
When will they give us a .BANK naming for banks only.
Agnostic_OS14th Dec 2009 -
.BANK is a much more important TLD than COOP or AERO
I have been advocating the introduction of .BANK since long, but this doesn't even seem to be part of discussions. I suggest that bankers consortium should come forward to sponsor this TLD like cooperatives have done for .COOP (a much less used or recalled TLD).
itssri@...15th Dec 2009 -
National domains, mixed type, and hazards
I don't think that top level domain tells you anything useful except where in the world the Internet site supposedly is located. And about a thousand "uk" business sites actually operated from China were just closed down, so it isn't even good for that. Conversely, television companies like to pretend to be based in Tuvalu (but isn't climate change about to leave its territory completely and permanently underwater? Well... Venice survives, for now), but everyone wants to have a dot com name, even if they are not, and never will be, "com". I mean! "Rihanna.com"!
I haven't studied whether non-Roman equivalents to "dot com" will be treated as equivalent, or whether you can register a mixed language address such as "??????.COM". Some time ago it was proposed that maliciously malformed names could be registered and used in misleading internet addresses such as maybe "hello-?itty" instead of "hello-kitty", and I don't know whether we are protected from that, too.
Robert Carnegie 200917th Dec 2009 -
RE: Domain names get international flavor
The title of the story is misleading! Domain names already had international flavor since long. It's EU domains that have got it now!itssri@...15th Dec 2009
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