Internationalized domain names are domains that support one or more non-ASCII characters, such as www.øl.com and 스타벅스코리아.com.
Although IDNs have been around for many years, top-level IDNs (such as .jp, .com, etc.) have proven elusive.
Until recently.
Below is a running list of all top-level internationalized domain names (IDNs) that have passed the ICANN string evaluation stage as of October 22nd, 2011:
- Algeria (dz): الجزائر
- Bangladesh (bg): বাংলা
- China (cn): 中國 (traditional); 中国 (simplified)
- Egypt (eg): مصر
- Georgia (ge): გე
- Hong Kong (hk): 香港
- India (in): See chart below.
- Iran (ir): ایران
- Jordan (jo): الاردن
- Kazakhstan (kz): қаз
- Korea, Republic of (kr): 한국
- Malaysia (my): مليسيا
- Morocco (ma): المغرب
- Oman (om): عمان
- Pakistan (pk): فلسطين
- Palestinian Territory (ps): فلسطين
- Qatar (qa): قطر
- Russian Federation (ru): рф
- Saudi Arabia (sa): السعودية
- Serbia (rs): срб
- Singapore (sg) 新加坡 (traditional Chinese); சிங்கப்பூர் (Tamil)
- Sri Lanka (lk): ලංකා (Sinhalese); இலங்கை (Tamil)
- Syria (sy): سورية
- Taiwan (tw): 台湾 (simplified); 台灣 (traditional); 臺灣 (variant string)
- Thailand (th): ไทย
- Tunisia (tn): تونس
- Ukraine (ua): укр
- United Arab Emirates (ae): امارات
- Yemen (ye): اليمن
You can purchase a large poster of these IDNs here.
India (in) is a uniquely challenging domain because the country is home to more than 20 official languages across multiple scripts. Here are the strings that have passed string evaluation:
The following visual positions half of these domains over their respective regions:
Oh, and not every country that applies for an IDN gets approved. So far, Greece and Bulgaria have been rejected, as follows:
- ελ, looked too much like .EA
- бг looked too much lik .br
Doesn’t make much sense to me, but that’s another story.
PS: If you’re seeing empty boxes instead of Sinhalese or Bangla characters, you don’t have the necessary font installed. This is one of the glaring differences between Windows and Mac. Below is a screen grab that shows Firefox on Mac OSX on the left and IE8 on Windows 7 on the right.
For more information: ICANN
Terrific! Thanks! For a .bd by the way, it is even difficult to fax Bangla, due to very weak backbone. But I’ll try
Philippe Blankert – jpblankert at zonnet dot nl
Internationalised Domain Names B.V.
.bd: very difficult faxing .bd due to very weak backbone or even getting a reaction…
J Philippe Blankert
Internationalised Domain Names BV
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Hi John
Sorry to nitpick, but you’ve listed the wrong version of the Traditional Taiwanese string.
They applied for two versions, with the one you’ve listed as a ‘desired variant’ of the Traditional script. This variant was not approved by ICANN last week. The correct Traditional script version is: .台灣
cheers
jon
Hi Jon — thanks for catching that. I’ll update it.
Also, please publish a new poster version of your ccTLD map with the IDNs on it, once the dust settles. I’ll be your first customer!
cheers
jon
Will do! Thanks Jon.
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Fascinating stuff, thanks for the update. I work in international translations and market research (based London) and we’re following developments closely!
Algeria joins the list
Thanks Jothan — I’ve updated the list.
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