Accented Characters Now Allowed in Slovenian Domain Names, Registration Costs Reduced

The Academic and Research Network of Slovenia (ARNES), a public institute responsible for managing Slovenia’s country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .si, has announced new rules, effective October 20, 2010, governing the registration of internationalized domain names (IDNs).

Until October 20, it was possible to register only .si domain names using the 26 standard Latin alphabet characters (A to Z), the numerals 0 to 9 and hyphens.

Under the new rules, IDNs may also include the accented Latin characters, used in many European languages. For example, the domain names may include characters with a caron used in the Slovenian language — “č”, “š” and “ž”. The accents can change the meaning of a word, e.g. “zima.si” (without the caron) means winter, while “žima.si” (with the caron) refers to horsehair.

Another novelty is the possibility to register two-character domain names, whereas the previous minimum was three characters. The upper limit of 63 characters remains the same.

There will be no sunrise period for trademark owners; the new domain names will be registered on a first-come, first-served basis.

ARNES has also reduced the registration and renewal fees. For the list of authorized registrars, please go here.

Fore more information, please contact Sinja Leskovec at our Slovenia office.

Source: ARNES