I was recently sent a document detailing all the international web domains by country. (Don’t ask why) So I am now the proud owner of a list that goes all the way from the Ascension Islands (.ac) to Zimbabwe (.zw). Reading through it gave me plenty of food for thought.

For instance, did you know that that Jersey (.je), Guernsey (.gg) and the Isle of Man (.im) have their own suffixes although they are part of the United Kingdom (.uk)? I certainly didn’t.

And did you know that .um was the domain suffix for United States Minor Outlying Islands? No? I’ve never heard of them either. The United States Minor Outlying Islands are in fact a group of islands, which includes Palmyra Atoll. None of the islands has any permanent residents - the population consisting of only temporarily stationed scientific and military personnel (316 at the last census!).

Looking at some of the more exotic and far-flung places in the directory reminded me of the island of Tuvalu and how its .tv suffix became quite a popular web domain for businesses in the world of television to adopt.

So how long before the following urls become sought after?

Cape Verde (.cv) – a must for recruitment consultants and headhunters

Croatia/Hrvatska (.hr) – for all Human Resources professionals

Guernsey (.gg) – for jockeys, horse breeders or bookmakers

Iraq (.iq) for Mensa members perhaps

Oman (.om) for practitioners of meditation

And finally Moldova (.md) for Managing Directors

More alternative uses for country code top-level domains will follow in a later blog. In the meantime, please send in any suggestions of your own.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 7:46 am and is filed under Internet, Web 2.0. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.