--- title: Internationalised Domain Names IDNs description: Explore Internationalised Domain Names IDNs and how they allow for accurate representation of te reo Māori online. url: https://www.taiuru.co.nz/internationalised-domain-names/ markdown_url: https://www.taiuru.co.nz/internationalised-domain-names.md type: post slug: internationalised-domain-names author: Karaitiana Taiuru published: 2026-11-09T22:02:37Z modified: 2026-11-10T00:57:39Z language: en-NZ taxonomies: category: - Internet Governance - Statistics word_count: 1548 tokens: 2562 --- # Internationalised Domain Names IDNs Macrons (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū) can be used in all .nz domain names, so web addresses can reflect the correct written form of te reo Māori. This article covers how that came about, how little the option was used in its first years, and why registrars largely decide whether Māori can spell their names correctly online. This article combines and updates several articles I first published in 2016. What is an Internationalised Domain Name? An Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) is a web address that uses characters beyond the basic English set of a–z, 0–9 and the hyphen. That includes letters with Māori macrons, accents (é, ü), and whole non-Latin scripts such as Chinese, Arabic or Cyrillic. The underlying domain name system only understands plain ASCII characters. So browsers and other software quietly convert an IDN into an ASCII form called Punycode, which starts with xn--. For example, māori becomes xn--mori-qsa. You see and type the macron version, while the system works with the encoded one behind the scenes. That is why registrants must configure their web server to recognise the macron version of their address. How macrons came to .nz In 2005 I wrote to the Domain Name Commissioner, the authority responsible for New Zealand domain names. I asked it to consider allowing macrons (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū) so that te reo Māori could be written correctly in .nz domain names. I quoted the Māori Language Act, Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori’s orthographic conventions and Te Tiriti o Waitangi to show why macrons were needed in web addresses. .maori.nz and .māori.nz I also recommended that every registered .maori.nz domain be mirrored automatically to its macron equivalent, .māori.nz. Both recommendations were implemented on 26 July 2010. It was then, and still is, the registrant’s responsibility to configure their web server to recognise the macron version. Early barriers I knew at the time that the implementation would have issues. The international technical community had already been working for some time on solutions for other character sets, such as Chinese, Hindi and Arabic. The biggest issue was bringing te reo Māori into technology. The ability to type macrons on computers and on the web was still in its infancy, and software that produced macrons was costly. The commercial Te Kete Ipurangi keyboard, popular at the time with government and universities, used umlauts that special Māori fonts displayed as macrons. That was innovative at the time, but it caused a lot of confusion. People were typing umlauts rather than macrons, and had to unlearn and rethink what they knew. It also created a problem for domain names, because some people used umlauts instead of macrons. The IDN working group In 2007 the Domain Name Commissioner sought expressions of interest for a working group to consider introducing IDNs into .nz. The members were Dave Moskovitz, Sam Vilain, Nick Wallingford and myself. The Commissioner also invited two other experts to join: Wareko Te Angina of Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori (the Māori Language Commission), and Philip Greene, the InternetNZ Victoria University Cyberlaw Fellow. Three public consultations were held between 2007 and 2009 on the technical and implementation issues. Submissions ranged from te reo Māori to copyright. Māori and Sámi: Indigenous languages in domain names Te reo Māori was one of the first Indigenous languages that could be written correctly in a country’s domain names, but it was not the first. That distinction belongs to the Sámi languages of northern Scandinavia. In Norway, from 9 February 2004 an additional 23 characters from the Norwegian and Sámi languages were permitted in .no domain names, so that all the official written languages of Norway could be represented. In Sweden, .se first allowed Swedish letters such as å, ä and ö, and in 2007 added the characters needed for all of Sweden’s official minority languages: Finnish, Meänkieli (Tornedalen Finnish), Sámi, Romani and Yiddish. Both countries added Sámi characters as part of national language policy, so that every official or recognised language could be written in the national domain. Aotearoa followed in 2010. What sets the .nz approach apart is .māori.nz: a domain created for an Indigenous people that can itself be written correctly in that people’s language. IDN usage in .nz Three years after macrons became available in .nz, they were barely being used. A query of the .nz register by the Domain Name Commission on 31 July 2013 found that only 120 of the 530,927 .nz domain names (about 0.02%) contained a macron. Most were commercial names in .co.nz. Just four were in the domains created for Māori: two in .maori.nz and two in .iwi.nz. The reasons are set out below: few registrars offered macron registrations, there was little publicity, and registrants had to configure their own web servers before a macronised address would work. IDN registrations by second-level domain, as at 31 July 2013 2LD IDN registrations Share of IDNs .co.nz 75 62.5% .net.nz 14 11.7% .org.nz 13 10.8% .gen.nz 7 5.8% .geek.nz 4 3.3% .ac.nz 2 1.7% .maori.nz / .māori.nz 2 1.7% .iwi.nz 2 1.7% .govt.nz 1 0.8% .cri.nz, .health.nz, .kiwi.nz, .mil.nz, .parliament.nz, .school.nz 0 0% Total 120 100% New Zealand Government usage As at 2013, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage (Manatū Taonga) was the only .govt.nz user with a bilingual name and a macron version for its website. Both manatutaonga.govt.nz and manatūtaonga.govt.nz took visitors to the te reo Māori version of the site. The Ministry also used .maori.nz for the bilingual title of another of its websites: teopetaua28.maori.nz, for 28maoribattalion.org.nz. Although the Ministry correctly used the macron version in .govt.nz, its .māori.nz address had not been configured and landed on the registrar’s parked page. Māori domain names and .nz registrars Domain names are the street addresses of the internet. For Māori, being able to register a name spelt correctly in te reo, with macrons, or under the Māori-specific .maori.nz and .iwi.nz domains, is a basic question of identity online. Whether that’s possible doesn’t depend on policy alone. It depends on registrars. What is a registrar? A registrar is the company you register and manage a domain name through. In .nz, only registrars authorised by the Domain Name Commission (DNC) can register names. Each one decides which second-level domains it sells (such as .co.nz or .maori.nz) and whether it supports macrons. A name can only be registered if a registrar is willing to sell it, so in practice registrars are the gatekeepers of Māori names online. The figures below are as at July 2013. Macrons: 3 of 72 registrars Only 3 of the 72 authorised .nz registrars offered IDN registrations. Two were small New Zealand companies. The third was an international company that probably already supported IDNs for other domains. The low uptake has been put down to the cost of building IDN support against the expected return. It is widely accepted that if demand came from larger language markets, such as Chinese, Hindi or Arabic, every registrar would offer it. .maori.nz: 24 of 72 registrars Only 24 of the 72 registrars sold .maori.nz: New Zealand: 22 of 50. 23 didn’t sell to the public; they served corporate clients through account managers. A further 5 didn’t offer .maori.nz. Australia: 1 of 7. The rest mainly offered .co.nz. Other countries: 1 of 15. Domainz, New Zealand’s largest and most experienced registrar, didn’t recognise .maori.nz at all. A search for wharenui.maori.nz returned “Invalid Domain Name search request.” Domainz held a monopoly on .nz registrations until 2002. In July 2013 it was one of four registrars that together held 45.6% of the .nz market (Domain Name Commission, 2013). .iwi.nz: 2 registrars Two registrars were authorised for .iwi.nz. Freeparking registered names without macrons only. GodZone Internet Services registered names with and without macrons. The risks for Māori Te reo Māori is an official language, yet only 3 of 72 registrars could register a correctly spelt Māori name. Most people couldn’t get the macronised form through their usual provider, which normalises misspelt te reo online. Few providers means little competition and a single point of failure. If a small IDN registrar leaves the market, Māori registrants have few alternatives. For macrons in .iwi.nz names there was only one. Two-thirds of registrars didn’t offer .maori.nz, and one of the largest called it invalid. Registrants may never learn the option exists. That keeps uptake low and steers Māori towards .co.nz. Low visibility leaves Māori and iwi names open to cybersquatting in the domains where registrars do promote names. Support for te reo depends on registrars’ commercial return, not on the Māori Language Act or Te Tiriti. Registrars choose what they offer, and Māori names are treated as a commercial niche. The right to use te reo Māori in domain names was won through years of advocacy. Without registrars willing to offer it, that right exists on paper more than in practice. References Domain Name Commission. (2013). .nz market share – July 2013 [Data set]. [URL needed] Internetstiftelsen. (n.d.). Terms and conditions for .se and .nu domains. https://internetstiftelsen.se/en/domains/how-to-register-a-domain-name/terms-and-conditions-for-se-and-nu-domains/ Internetstiftelsen. (2010). Annual report 2009. .SE (The Internet Infrastructure Foundation). https://internetstiftelsen.se/app/uploads/2019/01/annual-report-2009.pdf Norid. (n.d.). Key figures. https://norid.no/en/om-domenenavn/statistics/key-figures Taiuru, K. (2015, June). Macrons not recognised in email by government systems [Press release]. Scoop. https://m.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1506/S00272/macrons-not-recognised-in-email-by-government-systems.htm Taiuru, K. (2017). Māori activism and hidden achievements in New Zealand’s Internet Domain Name System. https://www.taiuru.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Maori-activism-and-hidden-achievements-in-New-Zealands-Internet-Domain-Name-System.pdf