Egypt applies for Domain Name in Arabic

16 November, 2009 - 11:51 AM - 5 Comments

ICANN opened up web domain names to non Latin languages inviting countries to register DNS names in foreign languages. Egypt has applied for an Arabic Internet domain name with a suffix equating in the ASCII character set to “masr,” meaning Egypt in the Arabic language. This has drawn criticism abroad due to making these websites more difficult to access from the western nations where the computers and desktops are not configured by default to enter these characters.

This paves the way for more unique website DNS names online that will be primarily specific to a nation or language. Though this is a big deal internationally, a few nations such as China were already creating web domains with non-ASCII characters even without ICANN’s approval previously.

What is your opinion on non-ASCII web url’s? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Should the Internet remain 1 universal language in respect to domain names?

-Dragon Blogger

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Written by Justin Germino (1514 Articles Published)

Working in the IT Industry for over 10 years and specializing in web based technologies. Dragon Blogger has unique insights and opinions to how the internet and web technology works. An Avid movie fan, video game fan and fan of trying anything and everything new.

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sean@learnchinese

I definitely think that having Domain names with different languages should be allowed. The script of Chinese characters and Arabic alphabet are completely different than Latin characters and it wouldn't make sense to force every person on planet Earth to use letters with the same script.

However, I have a suspicion that these countries may want their own domain names just to better control their own people.

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Daniel@spanish translations.com/

I think ICANN is taking a step in the right direction. All cultures have the right to speak on the network in their own languages.

Max

Well, personally I don't like the idea. I'm sure it will divide the internet community instead of uniting the world. The internet (as www) has always had the intention f bringin people from all around the world together. Now, the Chinese will stick to their pages and the Arabs to their domains...
.-= MaxÂ´s last blog ..Developing Perfect Arabic Pronunciation =-.

dragonblogger

I agree that one thing about the internet was the "universal language", but many countries aren't too happy that the universal language was English :)

Alan @ Glass Pipes

This never occurred to me; and I don't think it ever crosses the mind of most users who use Latin characters. Although, there is no reason why the Internet should favor one language or character set over another. Why should the Egyptians or Chinese have to suffer trying to navigate 'our' English speaking web when the Chinese in particular have over 300 million Internet users. They should be able to enjoy sites in full Arabic or Chinese, including their domain names.