Domain names work in practice — How right-to-left

Depending on your language, fresh TLDs might be regarding fresh opportunities to the left of the dot.

When ICANN unveiled the list of top level domain name applications at a media event in London last summer, some in the community were upset that Arabic IDNs were presented left to right instead of right to left.

Some scripts, counting Arabic and Hebrew, are read from right to left.

This really hit home for me a couple weeks ago when I was writing regarding the registry agreement for شبكة. Whenever I paste that into WordPress, the cursor jumps to the left of the word instead of the right.

So how does this work in practice? If a language is to be read from right to left, is the top level domain not “right of the dot”?

Indeed, that’s the case.

I reached out to a couple firms to learn more regarding this.

ARI Registry Services provided some concrete examples.

As it turns out, most major browsers have localized versions. These versions handle the scripts, accounting for reading right to left.

Here’s an example for the by now delegated country code domain امارات. or .emarat. This is from the aeDA’s (.ae Domain Administration) web site:

The second level domain is to the far right, followed to the left by dot, then the top level domain, and / directory page URL.

If you imagine Reglike in Arabic, this page:

domainnamewire.com/regarding

would look something like

tuoba/moc.eriwemanniamod

So in some countries, right now they aren’t getting excited regarding expanding opportunities to the right of the dot. Instead, they’re buzzing regarding expanding to the left of the dot.