Domain names with special characters
About internationalized domain names (IDN)
IDN is an acronym for Internationalized Domain Names and refers to domain names with characters that are beyond the domain-name system’s character registry, which only encompasses the characters a-z, 0-9 and hyphens.
It was possible to register .se domains with the characters å, ä, ö, é and ü as early as 2003.
In the summer of 2007, characters that are used in the official Swedish minority languages also became available for registration, including: Finnish, Meänkieli (Tornedal Finnish), Sami, Romani and Yiddish. At the same time, written characters used by the other Nordic languages also became available for registration for .se domains. Collectively, domain names containing any of these characters are called IDN domains (Internationalized Domain Names). Click here for a complete list of all permitted characters.
Converted into DNS
The domain-name system (DNS) only recognizes the written characters a-z, 0-9 and hyphens. To handle other signs in the DNS, an encoding method is used to represent the international domain name characters in .SE. Using .SE’s conversion tool in the DomainManager, you can convert an IDN domain name to a domain name that is DNS-adapted and vice versa.
IDN compatible with most web browsers
For some time, IDN has been compatible with most web browsers, while there is still no finished solution to manage these characters in e-mail.
IDN contacts
If you have further questions regarding IDN domains, contact: Anne-Marie Eklund Löwinder at .SE, Tel: +46 (0)8-452 35 00, anne-marie.eklund-lowinder@iis.se
