Domain names with characters like å, ä, ö (IDN)

IDN stands for Internationalized Domain Names and refers to domain names with characters that lie outside of the domain name system’s character set, which only covers the characters a-z, 0-9 and dash.

As early as 2003 it became possible to register .se domains with the characters å, ä, ö, é and ü.

In 2007, the characters that occur in the official Swedish minority languages: Finnish, Meänkieli (Tornedalsfinska), Sami, Romany and Yiddish, were added. At the same time the characters of the other Nordic languages were made available for use in .se domains. Domain names with any of these characters are collectively called IDN domains (Internationalized Domain Names).

Click here for a complete character table covering all valid characters for .se-domains.

At present, there are more than 44,000 IDN domains registered with IIS. Just like with normal domain names, registration of internationalized domains is done through IIS’s registrars for .se domains.

Converted in DNS

The domain name system (DNS) actually only supports the characters a-z, 0-9 and dash. To be able to handle other characters in DNS, a method for conversion is used to enable representation of the characters that occur in the internationalized domain names at IIS.

Contacts for IDN

If you have any additional questions regarding IDN domains, please contact: IS customer service, phone: +46-8-452 35 00, info@iis.se