Using national characters in a domain name
A fi-domain name may contain national characters – letters outside the basic Latin alphabet, such as å, ä and ö. Because of technical limitations, however, such a domain name is not recommended as your primary domain name, since not all software, keyboards and email programs support these characters
How national characters work in a domain name
The internet’s name server system can only handle the basic Latin letters a–z, the digits 0–9 and the hyphen. National characters are therefore converted into a separate ACE form (ASCII Compatible Encoding) that the name server can read. Browsers and email programs that support national characters carry out this conversion automatically, so the user normally sees the domain name in its plain-language form.
How national characters work in a domain name
The internet’s name server system can only handle the basic Latin letters a–z, the digits 0–9 and the hyphen. National characters are therefore converted into a separate ACE form (ASCII Compatible Encoding) that the name server can read. Browsers and email programs that support national characters carry out this conversion automatically, so the user normally sees the domain name in its plain-language form.
Characters allowed in a domain name
A fi-domain name may contain:- the letters a–z
- the digits 0–9
- the hyphen (-)
- national characters such as å, ä and ö
The full set of allowed characters is shown in the image below.
- A domain name may not begin or end with a hyphen.
- A domain name may not begin with the characters xn--. The ACE form of a domain name containing national characters always begins with these characters.
IDN converter
The ACE form is also known as Punycode. With the IDN converter you can find out a domain name’s Punycode form before you apply for it. For example, viestintävirasto.fi in Punycode form is xn--viestintvirasto-7kb.fi.
Rights to domain names containing national characters
Registering a domain name does not give you a priority right to a corresponding alternative spelling. If you hold aao.fi, for example, that does not give you a priority right to åäö.fi; it too is granted to the first applicant in chronological order.
When assessing whether a domain name corresponds exactly to a protected name or trade mark, both the form with national characters and the form without them may be regarded as corresponding:
- A protected name or mark ÅÄÖ is matched by both åäö.fi and aao.fi.
- A protected name or mark AAO is matched only by aao.fi.
Technical limitations
Browsers: Most current browsers (for example Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari) support domain names containing national characters.
Email: Support for national characters in email programs still varies. Check support with the software manufacturer before you start using such an address. Without support, you have to use the awkward Punycode form – for example, info@ääkkönen.fi encoded is info@xn--kknen-fraa0m.fi. For this reason, a domain name containing national characters is not recommended for an email address.
Keyboards: Typing national characters can be difficult on a foreign-language keyboard. If your keyboard does not have the characters you need, you can insert them using your operating system’s own tools, for example Character Map or the on-screen keyboard in Windows.