Internationalized Domain Name (IDN): Special Characters in Domains

Since we are covering everything related to domain names, the last type of example to show are the internationalized domain names, known as IDN. IDNs utilitze non ASCII characters in the domain name. Considering non English words use ä, ö, å, é, è and non-Latin scripted languages are entirely non ASCII, IDN is a way to create usable domain names. Here is an example of a Swedish website.

Swedish spelling: Västerås.se – This is how a native will spell the word.

IDN spelling: xn--vsters-buam.se – This is the ASCII translation the characters Ä and Å for those that use special characters.

Standard spelling: Vasteras.se – This would be the standard spelling if we were to remove the special characters Ä and Å and call them both A.

Notice how all three domains lead you to the same website. As Västerås is a large city in Sweden, it was a good idea to get both domain names in case people were not sure how to replace the Ä and Å into English.

Pros of IDNs:

* Having the IDN allows you to keep control of your brand/corporate identity.

* Easy to type in for native speakers.

Cons of IDNs:

* Not all email boxes or web browsers support non ASCII characters.

* Security issues: homograph spoofing. It is easy to take a real domain and create a spoof with different Unicode letters that are seemingly the same. For example the letter ‘a’ can be U+0061 (Latin ‘a’) or U+0430 (Cyrillic ‘a’). A visitor would never see the different in these letters while typing, thus creating a major security problem for websites.

* Most keyboards do not have special characters, so it can confuse visitors.

We hope this article enlightens your knowledge of the plethora of domains available today. Remember a great web designer deserves a great website name.