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Verisign to delete .name 3LDs and email addresses

Kevin Murphy, May 11, 2026, 08:27:02 (UTC), Domain Registries

If you needed more evidence of how innovation-resistant the domain name industry can be, Verisign is killing off two non-standard services that have been running for a quarter-century.

The registry plans to discontinue sales of third-level domains in the .name gTLD, along with an email forwarding service that offered punters personalized email addresses.

.name is a gTLD approved by ICANN in its first round, in 2000. It went live in 2001 with a novel but arguably confusing registration flow — registrants were only able to acquire third-level domains.

If you wanted to register kevin.murphy.name, the registry (originally Global Name Registry, since acquired by Verisign) would register murphy.name to itself first and control the DNS of the second-level domain.

This has led to the unusual situation where, for example, andrew.hedges.name and david.hedges.name are registered to two different guys, using two different registrars, years apart. Neither David nor Andrew Hedges owns hedges.name.

According to a Registry Services Evaluation Process request approved by ICANN recently, Verisign will not only stop selling third-level domains, but it will also delete existing registrations:

Currently, third level domain names may be registered in the .name TLD. This RSEP seeks to discontinue third level domain name registrations due to declining usage and limited registrar support of the service.

Upon discontinuation, no new third level domain names will be registered and existing third level domain names will be terminated.

How many registrants and domains will be affected by this move is not clear, but it’s not zero. Monthly transaction reports show .name has about 96,000 domains under management, but the mix between 2LD and 3LD is not disclosed.

It appears that the deletion of these arguably premium surnames will make them available for registration again, but it’s not yet clear how Verisign plans to handle this. The drop? Auctions? It’s not stated in the RSEP.

Verisign is also turning off the email forwarding service that GNR offered since launch 25 years ago.

This service offered users email aliases using .name domains. You could pay to have firstname@lastname.name forward to your Hotmail, for example, (this was 2002). The domain would belong to the registry, the user just got use of the alias.

Verisign says this will be discontinued and the associated email addresses and MX records removed. SLDs that were used by the service will become available for registration again after one year.

Again, it’s not clear how many users will be affected but it does not appear to be zero. Verisign said it will give its registrars 90 days notice before it turns off the service, though it seems they’re mostly already aware of it.

It was pretty clear almost from the outset that the three-level structure GNR originally proposed was not a great business model in practice. It only took a couple of years before it started selling .name SLDs as well.

New gTLD applicants take note — non-standard registration paths tend to be unpopular with registrants and registrars alike.

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