IDN (internationalised domain names) was one of the hot topics at the last ICANN meeting in Lisbon.
In Lisbon the discussions were quite complex, as they were discussing the scope of IDN withing gTLDs ie. domains that are completely international in their nature.
When it comes to a ccTLD ie. one for a particular country a lot of the more “off the wall” topics can be safely ignored.
Ireland has two languages – English and Irish (Gaelic)
While the English language only has one or two accents, that are applied to “borrowed” words, the Irish language had several, though this has been reduced to one – the fada.
The humble fada can change the entire sound of a word (like most accents!), yet it is currently not possible to register a .ie domain using a fada.
My name in Irish is Mícheál O’Nialláin (or so I’ve been told), yet there is currently no way for me, or anyone else, to register the domain name while preserving the correct accents.
What of all the other Irish placenames?
Organisations?
People?
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could make use of accents in your .ie domain?
Would people want it?
Michele Neylon :: Pensieri
Technology, Marketing, Domains, Thoughts
Footer
Site hosted in Ireland by Blacknight - Content copyright Michele Neylon
I wonder how many people actually have the Irish Layout enabled to access íóúéá letters. IMHO I don’t think it’s worth having a name with the fada’s unless you were prepared to get http://www.MichealONiallain.ie and redirect it to http://www.MícheálONialláin.ie . I would worry about the number of people not being able to type in your URL.
But I guess that is not really the issue. Should it be enabled, sure. Would I use it, nope. Unless I had the setup as shown above.
cheer,
paul
It shouldn’t be enabled as accents are not universally used.
I thought that there is no apostrophe between the O and the last part of the name when it is written in Irish – e.g. O Nialláin not O’Nialláin
Cormac – “universally” in reference to what exactly?
Stewart – you’re probably right
Most non-techy people seem to ignore the location bar and type addresses directly into Google, Yahoo etc so if it was indexing properly I don’t think you’d have a problem. In saying that I’d do what paul suggests and get both variants.
I have a reasonable grasp of the Irish language (well, enough to score full marks in the Irish test for the Public Service, anyway), but I never am never entirely sure whether or not to put a fada over a letter or not.
Registering “both” versions of a domain name might make some sense, but to take the example of Michele’s name, with three accented letters there are actually EIGHT versions (sixteen extremely close matches if we consider confusion about whether the apostrophe should be there or not). Unless the DNS system (and I have to admit, I know just enough about it to spell D-N-S) was capable of ignoring the fada, by parsing accented letters back to there original form? It seems unreasonable to me that Michele should be able to register MichealONiallain.ie, but still have seven similar domains available to unscrupulous people who might try to take advantage of his good name…
Considering IEDR’s rules for .ie, registering Michele’s full name in Irish isn’t going to be allowed anyway.
I personally think the IDNs are a good idea. It’s not technically hard to do, and it will allow the proper use of Irish on our tld. I don’t see squatting as a big issue, as .ie is a managed domain, so if some squatter/phisher does register something close to a trademark, they will be slapped. For example, I don’t see a phisher being able to get áib.ie?
It won’t do me much good as the average child in first class could probably talk rings around me in “as Gaeilge” at this stage 🙁
Niall
I already have my full name in .ie 🙂
The example of my name was just that – an example.
Michele
Stewart, technically you are meant to have an apostrophe after the O.
O means from in Irish, Cormac O’Maoloain translates to Cormac from Moylan, and of course Mac means son of – Sean MacManus, Sean son of Manus.
Michele – Cormac – “universally” in reference to what exactly?
In the sense that the vast majority of users don’t know how to put an accent on a letter. Domains with accents wouldn’t be accessible if they were introduced and they would open up the possibility of Unicode/IDN phishing attacks as already mentioned.
Cormac
If your native tongue were Spanish, French or German you would have no issue putting accents on letters. In fact I would posit that it would be second nature.
Your definition of “universal”, therefore, is reserved for English speaking monoglots
Regards
Michele
You do know it is dangerous to give the IEDR people ideas like this. 🙂 Can you imagine the consternation of its registration management people if a pile of XN– domains start appearing. At least the personal subdomains seems to have faded off their radar for the moment. IEDR still has a comparatively large squatter problem which it must take care of before moving on to things like IDNs.
While it does seem like a great idea for diversifying I don’t think accented letters should be implemented. Except for native Irish speakers have you ever seen an Irish school student or adult (let alone OAP) try and type something in Irish?
Maybe it would be nice for things like the Irish government bodies but I think they would still have to use the non-accented .ie equivalents and I imagine they would get most of the traffic.
John – it’s relatively simple to translate the xn- back to the idn. I’ve even had discussions with their technical staff about IDN in the past, so I don’t see why it can’t be done from a technical point of view.
in an ideal world it would be nice, but doing it would only confuse people.