🇺🇦 🌻 Слава Україні 🌻 🇺🇦
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I was totally impressed when I recently discovered that Ukrainian .укр Cyrillic Domain Names can include an apostrophe.
In Unicode there are actually three apostrophe characters.
- ' U+0027 APOSTROPHE
- ’ U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
- ʼ U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE
The first two break words but the last is non breaking and so does not break words or domain name labels. U+02BC is the apostrophe used in Ukrainian .укр Cyrillic Domain Names.
UANIC is the Ukrainian Network Information Center Українським Мережевим Інформаційним Центром. UANIC maintains a list of the Unicode characters which are allowed in Ukrainian Domain Names. The allowed set of characters consists of hyphen, decimal digits, cyrillic letters and apostrophe. The complete and detailed list of allowed characters is on UANIC's site at uanic.net/tablicya-dozvolenix-simvoliv
What of other registries? I looked at Verisign's allowed characters for Ukrainian language domain names ➜ verisign.com/assets/languagefiles/UKR.html. The Verisgn allowed characters are the same as UANIC except for the aforementioned apostrophe which is not allowed by Verisgn. IMHO, Verisgn should also allow U+02BC apostrophe in Ukrainian language domain names.
I have also checked the Ukrainian IDN tables in the Repository of IDN Practices ➜ iana.org/domains/idn-tables (accessed 27th Feb 2023). There are multiple Ukrainian IDN tables from multiple Registries. Each table explicitly lists the characters allowed for IDN registrations. None of the Registries Ukrainian IDN tables include U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE. They could! They should! They must!
Apostrophe is used in the Ukrainian language en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_using_the_apostrophe_in_the_Ukrainian_language
If you look at my previous post schappo.blogspot.com/2022/08/ukrainian-cyrillic-domain-names-2.html you will see many Ukrainian .укр Cyrillic Domain Names. I have not yet encountered one containing an apostrophe. I would guess that most are not aware it is possible.
I have now found a rather unique domain name which consists of just a single apostrophe at the 2nd level ʼ.укр. It is the "support site for the national cyrillic domain .укр (Сайт підтримки національного кириличного домену .укр) and it works!.
Letʼs check it against IDNA2003 and IDNA2008 (unicode.org/faq/idn.html) using "Unicode Utilities: Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)" ➜ util.unicode.org/UnicodeJsps/idna.jsp?a=ʼ.укр. Everything good!🙂
There is still an issue which is the display of the domain name in the browser address bar. I have tried several browsers and most display incorrectly as punycode, xn--mqa.xn--j1amh or xn--mqa.укр, instead of Unicode ʼ.укр. So far, the only browser I have found which correctly displays as ʼ.укр is Firefox.
Incidentally, тест.укр (test.ukraine) resolves to the same site as ʼ.укр
