International Domain Names

**John Scott** · 12-29-2005, 10:19 AM

I hear some folks talking about internationalized domain names. From a Western point of view, it would seem like a natural thing for non-romanized cultures to do. For instance, since Japanese is written in Kanji (漢字）, Hiragana (ひらがな）　and Katakana (カタカナ）, you'd think that Japanese would prefer to use these in their domains.

Not quite. For one, kanji and kana in general are unfashionable, especially in the "high tech" Intenet. Secondly, by using a kana domain, they'd lose out on all the traffic which is unable to type in the kana.

Just my

of course.

**John Scott** · 12-29-2005, 10:34 AM

Image attached, from Wiki.

kwvarga · 12-29-2005, 10:49 AM

what the! i can not visit those sites with this keyboard lol

**John Scott** · 12-29-2005, 10:20 PM

Exactly why I don't see them being widely popular.

Ferre · 12-30-2005, 02:42 AM

Yep, but I guess that having a kana domain that directs to the original 'english' domain isn't a bad idea.

**John Scott** · 02-26-2006, 02:47 PM

More opinions please?

I'm wanting to put together an article on this.

WorldwideTrading · 02-26-2006, 03:24 PM

I always wondered how that worked for french companies with ç's and german companies with ú's what do you do on the internet?

**John Scott** · 02-26-2006, 03:46 PM

cgreen, those domains now can be used, using the regional characters.

kwvarga · 02-27-2006, 02:56 PM

píerehaircut.fr

seems fine, because people that would go to píere's would be french, i.e. could type the letters.

but for a true, internet, access-from-anywhere point of view, it wont work.