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Characters Allowed in a Domain Name
This guide details the permitted and valid characters when you need to create a domain name (up to 63 characters) with Infomaniak.
International Standards
The characters allowed in a domain name are determined by the technical standards defined by the domain name regulatory body, typically the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) globally, and by national or regional regulatory bodies, such as the Autorité de régulation des noms de domaine en France (AFNIC) for .fr domains in France.
To understand the possibilities at the level of an email address itself (distinct part before the @ symbol), read this guide.
In general, the characters allowed in a domain name include:
- letters of the alphabet (a to z)
- numbers (0 to 9)
- hyphen (-)
However, there are also domain extensions that allow the use of accented characters or other special characters. These rules may vary depending on the specific domain extension (such as .fr, .com, .net, etc.) and the policies established by the relevant regulatory bodies.
Accented Characters?
It is possible to purchase a domain name containing an accent on a letter (Ă©
for example) from Infomaniak.
The encoding method that allows the inclusion of non-Latin characters, such as accented, Cyrillic, Chinese, etc., in domain names is called Punycode. It transforms Unicode characters into an ASCII form readable by computer systems.
This means that a domain name containing non-ASCII characters is transformed into an ASCII string starting with xn--
.
This transformation is reversible, so that software can interpret and display the original domain name correctly.