Definition

An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that (potentially) contains non-ASCII characters. However, the standard for domain names does not allow such characters, so internationalized domain names have to be converted into standard ASCII domain names while. This is done by converting them into punycode.

Please note, that only some TLDs support IDNs and some only support specific character sets. Have a look at the IDN category for a list of IDN capable TLDs and the corresponding TLD info for the supported character sets.

Language Tags

When registering IDN domains you have to specifiy the language tag, which states what language/character set the domain name is in. There a different kinds of language tags:

• Verisign language tag (e.g. for the TLDs COM/NET)
• NeuStar Registry (e.g. for .BIZ)

API Support

The API parameter X-IDN-LANGUAGE can be used to specify the IDN language tag. The following commands accept the parameter:

• AddDomain
• CheckDomain
• CheckDomains
• TransferDomain