Domain name requirements

Domain name naming policy

There are a number of restrictions on the names that can be registered in as domain names.

It is not possible to register domain names that do not comply with naming policy.

Names must:-

• contain a minimum of 3 characters selected from the letters "a" to "z" or "A" to "Z" in standard US ASCII character set, the digits "0" to "9" and the hyphen ("-");
• contain a maximum of 63 characters (excluding the ".tel" suffix);
• contain at least one letter ("a" to "z" or "A" to "Z") in standard US ASCII script;
• not begin or end with a hyphen ("-");
• not contain a hyphen ("-") in the 3rd and 4th positions; and
• not consist purely of digits.

Some of these are contractual requirements from ICANN and others are a matter of Telnic policy. Names which are reserved on behalf of ICANN are not available at the second level and at all other levels within the TLD at which Telnic makes registrations.

All labels consisting of one or two characters are reserved at the second level. Any labels containing hyphens in the third and fourth position (ie encodings of Internationalised Domain Names) are also reserved. The names of all current Top-Level Domains in the IANA database are reserved.

ICANN requires Telnic to reserve names of territories, distinct economies, and other geographic and geopolitical names.