IEDR Opens Public Consultation On IDN Domains

Irish Passport

IEDR has launched a public consultation on the introduction of IDN domains in the .ie name space.

The consultation period runs from February 21st, 2016, until March 21st, 2016.

Up until now only Latin characters have been permitted in .ie domain names, even though one of Ireland’s official languages is Irish (gaelic) which uses accented characters. The “fada” is used in the Irish language to elongate vowel sounds, so it can be found on a, e, i, o or u transforming them into á, é, í,ó,ú.

A lot of Irish place names, people’s names and organisation names use the Irish language, so up until now they’ve only ever been able to register the non-accented version. For example, the Irish translation of my first name is Micheál. At the moment I cannot register micheál.ie (or any variation on that), but would have to settle for micheal.ie (without the accent on the “a”).

So at a high level, once there is agreement people (and organisations) will be able to register their “real” Irish name(s). Of course, as we know, there are still issues around “universal acceptance” of IDN domains, so email and other applications currently do not work 100% with IDNs. As a result of this setting reasonable expectations with IDN IE domains will be an important part of the release and promotion of them.

Here’s the background documents as prepared by the IEDR in consultation with the Policy Advisory Board:

[spiderpowa-pdf src=”https://www.internetnews.me/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/IDN-Public-Consultation-Document.pdf”]IDN-Public-Consultation-Document

You can submit your feedback on the consultation via email to idn-consult@iedr.ie before March 21st 2016.

Disclosure: I am one of the four registrar representatives on the IEDR’s PAC.

By Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade. He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

3 comments

  1. Go raibh maith agat Michele, Thank you for posting this information.

    This is really great news but for the fact that it is nearly completely hidden from view.

    Even when I search in Google ‘IEDR.ie + an síneadh fada’ no relevant hit comes up. I suspect Google, no more than myself, doesn’t make enough of a link between the word ‘internationalisation’ and ‘fada’..

    It might be worth addressing the meta-data / keywords / SEO on help the Irish language using/concerned public and others who are interested in the síneadh fada in actually finding the relevant document….

    “Country code top-level domain, Domain name, idn, iedr, Internationalized domain name, internet, ireland, irish”…. where’s the word ‘fada’?

    Tá an cháipéis ag an nasc seo: https://www.iedr.ie/?s=fada

    Well done again

    C.

    1. Cormac

      Thanks for the feedback, though I have zero control over how IEDR do things on their side.
      I’d hope that registrars and others will spread the word
      Thanks for you comment
      Michele

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