IDN stands for "Internationalized Domain Name." An Internationalized Domain Name is a domain name that contains characters outside of the traditional ASCII character set, which allows domain names to include non-English characters, such as accented letters or characters from other scripts like Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, etc.
Before the introduction of IDNs, domain names were limited to the basic Latin alphabet (A-Z), digits (0-9), and hyphens (-), without support for accented characters or characters from other scripts. This limitation created challenges for individuals and businesses in non-English speaking regions, as they were unable to use domain names that accurately represented their languages or brands.
With IDNs, users can now register domain names in their native languages, making the internet more accessible and inclusive. For example, a person in Russia can register a domain name in Cyrillic characters, or someone in China can register a domain name using Chinese characters.
However, it's essential to consider that not all domain registries support IDNs, and the rules for registration may vary depending on the top-level domain (TLD). TLDs are the extensions at the end of domain names, such as .com, .org, .net, etc. Many popular TLDs now support IDNs, but it's always best to check with domain registrars and registries to see which specific characters and languages are supported for a particular TLD.
What characters are supported?
Availability of languages is dependent upon Unicode characters. Many scripts (especially Latin) are used for a very large number of languages. Unicode covers all the languages that can be written in the following scripts: Latin; Greek; Cyrillic; Armenian; Hebrew; Arabic; Syriac; Thaana; Devanagari; Bengali; Gurmukhi; Oriya; Tamil; Telugu; Kannada; Malayalam; Sinhala; Thai; Lao; Tibetan; Myanmar; Georgian; Hangul; Ethiopic; Cherokee; Canadian-Aboriginal Syllabics; Ogham; Runic; Khmer; Mongolian; Han (Japanese, Chinese, Korean ideographs); Hiragana; Katakana; Bopomofo; Croatian and Yi.
Which TLDs are supported?
Currently, we support IDN for .COM and .NET.
