back to article Nominet to launch .wales and .cymru

Wales is to get two new top-level internet domains – one for Welsh speakers and one for the rest of us – under a deal announced yesterday between the Welsh government and .uk registry Nominet. The move to apply for both .wales and .cymru sidesteps criticism that the Welsh government was planning to abandon the Welsh language …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    .cymru

    While .cymru may have a use for Welsh language websites I fear it's going to get very confusing with all these new TLDs. .Wales is cumbersome and long most people will still continue to just type .com or .co.uk

    1. craigj

      Re: .cymru

      Not a fan of all these new tlds either, It will make branding and advertising URLs a lot harder. I think you're right, things will get more confusing for your average user.

      But to be fair .wales is the same amount of characters as .co.uk, so I don't think "cumbersome and long" is a valid argument.

    2. Ru
      Facepalm

      Re: .cymru

      That's the problem with new TLDsin a nutshell. We already got a raft of new, worthless gTLDs... rubbish like 'museum' and 'biz' and 'info' and 'name' that no-one really cares about or uses. Even ccTLDs didn't remove the general desire for .com domains; this new gimmick isn't going to be any different.

    3. peredur

      Re: .cymru

      ... and those of us worried by that will simply buy both domains and redirect .co.uk to .cymru or .wales or whatever.

      As long as it's the new tld that gets bookmarked and used in links, by the end of the first year you could probably drop the .co.uk and save the few pounds a year it's costing you.

      http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1484304.html

  2. Dr Dan Holdsworth
    Pirate

    I am tempted to ask...

    .Cymru is all very well for all the gogs out there, but for all those lot down south, shouldn't there be .Gymru as well?

    1. peredur
      Terminator

      Re: I am tempted to ask...

      Pam dach chi'n meddwl bod enw gwahanol ar y wlad yn y de? Mae'r gair ei hun yn treiglo llawn cymaint ta waeth fyddai'ch tafodiaith.

      [Why do you think the county's name varies between north and south? The word itself mutates in the same way whatever your dialect is]

      http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1484304.html

      1. peredur

        Re: Re: I am tempted to ask...

        Oops! Sorry about the spurious link in the previous post. New laptop. Haven't got used to the keyboard and mouse pad yet.

    2. Tom yng Nghymru
      Boffin

      Re: I am tempted to ask...

      Gymru is a soft mutation of Cymru. On the Welcome to Wales sign it is written as Croseo i Gymru because the 'i' causes a soft mutation changing the C to a G. The C can also change to a Ch or Ngh depending on the type the mutation needed.

      Lloegr a Chymru - England and Wales

      Yng Nhgymru - In Wales

      This can cause problems sometimes. A friend of mine worked on a project where somebody had created some promotional material including a logo based on the word Pontardawe. Unfortunately when they wanted to use that logo to generally replace the word Pontardawe on one poster they couldn't because 'In Pontardawe' in Welsh is 'Ym Mhontardawe' so it didn't work.

  3. Justicesays
    Joke

    I expect that

    most registrations in the .cat domain are along the lines of

    lol.cat

    1. Soruk
      Go

      Re: I expect that

      You may joke...

      http://nyan.cat/

  4. Gerhard

    I always wanted to move to Ireland

    Just so I could register forexample.ie .

    1. Tom Wood

      Why?

      "i.e." (id est) does not mean "for example", it means "that is"...

      Try moving to Egypt.

      1. Ian Stephenson

        Macedonia

        Inaco.ma

        Alcoholinducedco.ma

        1. M Gale

          Still room for comedy.

          shavethe.wales

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Still room for comedy.

            And for those who remember Not the Nine-o'clock News

            failedin.wales

            madefrom.wales

            laidin.wales

          2. graeme leggett Silver badge

            Re: Still room for comedy.

            princeof.wales

  5. Piloti
    Thumb Down

    Wales is not a country......

    .... so may as well just have somethign like .yorks or .lancs or .devon or whatever poinlessness you wish.........

    1. frank ly

      Re: Wales is not a country......

      What is your reasoning in support of that statement?

      1. Piloti

        Re: Re: Wales is not a country......

        History.

        1. Tim Jenkins

          Re: Re: Re: Wales is not a country......

          On the contrary, Wales IS a country. It is not, however, a sovereign state.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdom

          1. Piloti

            Re: Re: Re: Re: Wales is not a country......

            Wikipaedia is oftern 'inaccurate; and so once again it proves to be.

            A quick history lessong for you.

            Prior 1066 there were simply regions and lords ruling [what is now known as] the UK.

            Wales at this point was no more a country than England.

            When the Normans came along, they started to exert control of Mercia /England.

            Edward i then conquered the regions to the west of England [the bit known as wales] but as this area was still ruled by regional lords, wales at ths point was still not a country.

            Edward consulidated this and built castles to control the place.

            There were two unions with wales / England, one in the 13th century and another in the 16th.

            It was the second that gave added the laws of England to all of the regions of wales, effectvly unifying wales as one place and becoming 'part' of England, as a principlity.

            Unless I am very much mistaken, at no point from then has wales gained any sort of independance and, although it may not be popularly understood, wales is not a country.

            Playing football, or rugby or having a dialect [like, say Yorkshire or Lancashire] does not make it a country.

            And just because wikipaedia uses the term "Countries of the United Kingdom" int he title does not make it accurate; just flawed.

            1. Peter Hoare

              Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wales is not a country......

              Well Wikipedia is *sometimes* inaccurate... is the Welsh Government a good enough source for you?

              "Wales is a country in it's own right." (see http://www.wales.com/en/content/cms/faqs/faqs.aspx#Question 11)

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Wales is not a country......

      On the other hand, it has rather more autonomy than Yorkshire, so it is conceivable (though not very) that people browsing the web might need to know that a site is Welsh rather than English.

      These two are the least unreasonable gTLD proposals that I've read about so far, but that's not saying much.

  6. Graham Bartlett

    dotCYM

    Just don't tell anyone it's pronounced "dot-cum",.

    1. philbo

      Re: dotCYM

      I was going to say this.. and that .cym should be the Welsh equivalent of the .xxx domains :)

  7. Chad H.
    FAIL

    Whilst

    Even though they say .wales will be for international visitors and Cymru for the welsh, in reality it will end up only used by S4C's 6 viewers.

  8. Giles Jones Gold badge

    How long before people start to demand domain suffixes for towns and cities?

    A web address should not become as cumbersome as a mail address, it's only a shortcut not an address used to pinpoint a specific location on a map.

  9. dotdavid
    Go

    Aliases

    Why not have .wales become an alias for .cymru, so if you go to, for example, www.riseupagainsttheenglish.wales you see the same site as you would if you went to www.riseupagainsttheenglish.cymru?

    Or would this cause problems with certificates and stuff?

    1. Martin an gof Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Aliases

      Probably most will use this system as many already do, though some use it to set the default language for a site; try www.museumwales.ac.uk and www.amgueddfacymru.ac.uk for example.

      M.

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Aliases

      I wondered about that. If I register under one and not the other, do I have a good case against some domain squatter who registers under the other? If not, I may feel obliged to register both even though I don't intend to use one.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    So will...

    ...the .Cymru site be in English until an English person goes onto the site, where upon it will suddenly start serving pages in Welsh, only to return to English when they leave again?

    1. Christoph
      Joke

      Re: So will...

      Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gygieithu.

      ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7702913.stm )

  11. fLaMePrOoF

    First names to go...

    "Jimmy"

    "Jimbo"

    "James"

    1. philbo

      ..and to follow

      theoutlawjosey

  12. TeeCee Gold badge
    Coat

    Next week.

    Flame war at ICANN as Nominet accuse the IWC of attempted typo-squatting.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Cymru am byth?

    I don't mean to 'diss' Wales, but those thinking that the .wales TLD will help the country's international profile better than .cymru should realise that many people outside the UK have never even heard of Wales, never mind know where the hell it is.

    And, where they have heard of it, they often think it's a town in England.

    Sad but true.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What a total waste of bits ...

    .... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-10749568

  15. druck Silver badge
    Stop

    Another drain on the Welsh economy

    Where is the business case for this? Almost £400,000 of public money will be going to ICANN to set up the domains, and then countless thousands of pounds of private money from Welsh businesses flowing in to the hands of Nominet every year in order to defensively register in the .wales and .cymru domains. How much of extra business do they think those domains will pull in? Pence?

  16. Clyde

    Not public money

    Baloney - the article clearly said that Nominet is putting up the funding for this project. Nominet is not a public body - there is no use of public money to set this up.

    Methinks you've got your own agenda going here.

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