: You could register such a domain: the .com registrar allows it, but be aware that in many browsers (Opera and Firefox, at least) the PUNYCODE version of the domain (that’s the unreadable

@Murray432

You could register such a domain: the .com registrar allows it, but be aware that in many browsers (Opera and Firefox, at least) the PUNYCODE version of the domain (that’s the unreadable version beginning with xn--) will display in the address bar instead of the nice, readable Unicode version.

There’s a good reason for that. IDNs (Internationalised Domain Names) allow all sorts of characters, which allows for easy spoofing. The domain name pаypal.com, for example, contains the Cyrillic character а, which looks identical, in most fonts, to the Latin a. That’s dangerous. The .se registrar would not allow this domain to be registered: it has strict policies on what characters are allowed. Therefore browsers trust the .se registrar and allow IDNs in .se. Browsers don’t trust the .com registrar, and disallow IDNs in .com. People could still type in the IDN, and it would work, but it would display in the address bar in its PUNYCODE form.

You might want to try the .info registrar. They have strict policies, and Opera and Firefox allow IDNs in .info.

Other browsers behave differently. Your domain name should display fine in Safari, whichever registrar you choose. Safari disables Greek, Cyrillic, and Cherokee scripts, but allows extended Latin. Internet Explorer’s behaviour depends on the user’s settings.

More information can be found in an article I wrote: Internationalised Domain Names - Bringing the World to the Web.

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