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Forget emojis, you can buy Egyptian hieroglyph .com domains
Call them the Emojis of the Ancient World.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were once the cutting edge of written communication, and it turns out Verisign lets you register .com domains using them.
Internationalized domain names expert Andre Schapp discovered a couple months ago that the Unicode code points for the ancient script have been approved in 16 Verisign gTLDs, and apparently no others.
This means that domains such as 
should resolve.
Unfortunately, DI’s database does not support these characters, so I’m having to use images.
But at least one domain investor seems have snapped up a few dozen single-pictograph Egyptian hieroglyph names about a month ago, and his page has clickable links.
Whether you see the hieroglyph or the Punycode, prefixed “xn--“, seems to depend on your browser configuration.
Ancient Egyptian is apparently not the only dead script that Verisign supports.
According to IANA, you can also get .com domains in Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, which went out of fashion in the second century CE, as well Phoenician, the world’s oldest known script.
Then there’s Imperial Aramaic, Meitei, Kharosthi, ‘Phags-pa, Sylheti Nagari and goodness knows how many other extinct writing systems.
It seems .com has been approved for 237 IDN scripts, in total. Let it not be said that Verisign does not offer domainers ample opportunity to spunk their cash on gibberish.
No Klingon, though.
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What, back to dot com? What happened to .ws? Seriously, I love them all because I love progress. As a writer, I believe text is great but a few emoji here and there make life a little brighter. I’ve been enjoying your articles Kevin.
and no Braille … xn--ljig8f.com
The Verisign domains which explicitly permit Egyptian Hieroglyphs are .com .comsec .name .net .verisign .ком .קום .कॉम .नेट .คอม .كوم .コム .大拿 .点看 .닷넷 .닷컴.
There may well be other Registries, such as .ws, which allow Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
What’s a hieroglyph? LOL…good luck with that
Wait…Lol…I tried to enter emojis in my last post with the smiley face with tears because this article made me laugh but this blog doesn’t allow them. Maybe I should try using some of those hieroglyph things you talked about… I bet those would work 🙂 #Dinosaur
The Phoenician alphabet has been available for a while ..
xn--ig-6rs.com ( ḇig.com available ).
it works on 101Domain and Uniregistry.
im not follwing this, i like emojis even though in .ws becuase they are on 100 million smartphones, and windows 10 just added CTRl+ popup.
How many people can type in an Egyptian Hyrologlyphic, do you have to reset your keyboard?
I dont see these gliphs in my nix, but i do see emoji
Open to hear, how would users type in a egyptian hyroglip if i used in marketing campaign?
Page Howe
I doubt they would.
I currently have EmojiPet/Com on auction at sedo, I can see these being popular down the road. None too sure about hieroglyphs though
Not sure why this is considered new. Did someone just discover IDNs? Verisign supports the near complete unicode repertoire. Has done for years. You should be able to register ancient Sanskrit if you wanted. Or maybe runic characters if you love your vikings.
Come back to me when DNS supports unicode. Then we’ll have true internationalisation.
From a marketing standpoint I registered the ankh hieroglyph .com represented as http://xn--wb8d.com which forwards to my Australian jewellery website! (impress.design)
Any short memorable domain extension is bound to attract attention! acts as a great URL shortener..
Pure novelty! IMO. 😉