Discover the characters allowed for a domain name

This guide details the characters allowed and valid when you need to create a domain name (of 63 characters maximum) with Infomaniak.

Preamble

• The characters allowed in a domain name are determined by the technical standards defined by the domain name regulator, generally the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) worldwide, and by national or regional regulatory bodies, such as the French Domain Name Regulatory Authority (AFNIC) for .fr domains in France.
• To understand the opportunities at the level of an email address itself (separate part coming from before the arobase @), take notice of this other guide.

Special characters, accents (punnycode)...

In general, the characters allowed in a domain name include:

• letters of the alphabet (a to z)
• the figures (0 to 9)
• the trait of union (-) but these indents are allowed provided they are not placed at the beginning or end

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 regulatory bodies concerned.

It is possible to purchase from Infomaniak a domain name containing an accent on a letter (é e.g.). This method of coding which allows to include non-Latin characters, such as characters increased, Cyrillic, Chinese, etc., in domain names is called Punnycode It transforms Unicode characters into an ASCII form that is 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 with some software/mail clients who can in this case correctly interpret and display the original domain name But in general, Infomaniak does not recommend the use of email on domain names with emphasis:

What about the point?

A domain name is structured into several labels separated by dots. Example: example.com where com is the TLD (first level domain) and example is the second level domain.

Points are reserved to separate the different parts of a domain name, as between the second level domain and the TLD. You cannot buy a domain with a point at the beginning or end of a label, or as an isolated character inside a label.