15 % of all Internet names in the world are already in Cyrillic and it is among the three most popular writing systems in the world network, was announced today at the launch of the European domain .ею.
The Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications launched the procedure on .eu in Cyrillic in 2008 with an inquiry aimed to consult the preferred string of the Bulgarian Internet community. That is how was chosen the combination .eю. The application was submitted for registration to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) with the assistance of the European Commission.
Seven years later the head of the European Commission Representation to Bulgaria Ognyan Zlatev and the External Relations Manager of EURid Giovanni Seppia announced the launch of .eю.
EURid is a non-profit organization that manages the high-level domain .eu after a tendering procedure and appointment of the European Commission. The register works with over 700 accredited registrars and provides services to the 24 official EU languages.
The Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications shares the opinion that this is a historic moment for the construction of a digital single market and for Bulgaria as well. The .eu domain is a symbol of quality and belonging to Europe for the companies that use it. It is among the most popular high level domains in the world, connecting more than 500 million people from 31 countries in the European internet identity. More than 3.9 million names have been registered since the first registration in 2006.
Registered internationalized domain names (IDNs) of high level in Cyrillic represent 15% of all and the Cyrillic alphabet ranked first among the international domains registered in 2014 with over 700,000 new registrations, reveals a current study of EURid and UNESCO.
The Cyrillic alphabet became one of the three major writing systems in the world wide web, along with the Latin alphabet and the Han / Chinese characters. Over 90% of all Internet names are in these three writing systems.
"The Bulgarian language is one of the official languages and the only one in Cyrillic in the European Union and its use on the web is important for both its conservation and the establishment of the Bulgarian cultural identity. For this reason we are working hard for several years to realize a high-level domain in Cyrillic", said Giovanni Seppia.
In 2009 EURid launched internationalized second level domains .eu that support the three official European alphabets - Latin, Cyrillic and Greek and today we see the rapid growth of one of them – the domains in Cyrillic already outnumber those in Chinese.
According to EURid and UNESCO the internationalized domains are the main drivers of multilingualism in cyberspace. They allow for the standard domain management system (Domain Name System) to recognize the names in a native language.
