If emoji domains are not annoying enough, you’ll be happy to know they are backed by an equally annoyingly named syntax called Punycode.
Punycode is a special encoding syntax used to convert Unicode (UTF-8) domain names containing characters from non-Latin scripts (such as Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, etc.) into a sequence of ASCII characters that can be understood by the Domain Name System (DNS). The DNS, which is the internet’s address book, traditionally supports only a limited set of characters, primarily the letters A-Z, digits 0-9, and the hyphen. This limitation posed a challenge for representing international domain names (IDNs) that include language-specific characters outside this range.
Punycode was developed as a part of the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) framework to address this challenge. It allows users around the world to use domain names in their native language, enhancing the accessibility and usability of the internet. Punycode encodes Unicode characters into the ASCII format by using an algorithm that converts a sequence of Unicode characters into a string of ASCII characters beginning with the prefix “xn--“. This prefix indicates that the domain name contains encoded characters beyond the basic ASCII set.
For example, the Unicode domain name “пример.com” (which means “example.com” in Cyrillic) would be encoded in Punycode as “xn--e1afmkfd.com”. This encoded form is what gets entered into the DNS, while users can still type or click on the more familiar, readable version in their web browsers.
Punycode plays a crucial role in the internationalization of the internet, allowing users to register and use domain names that reflect their language and script accurately, as well as those damn emojis. This encoding system ensures that the global internet remains inclusive, giving equal access to users worldwide, regardless of the language they speak or the script they use.
