The top-level domain (TLD) “XN—5TZM5G” is an Internationalized Country Code Top-Level Domain (IDN ccTLD) assigned to China. The term “XN—5TZM5G” appears unusual due to it being a Unicode translated into ASCII format using a method called Punycode. This character encoding system was created to introduce domain names with non-ASCII characters.
Thus, “XN—5TZM5G” is a Punycode representation of the Chinese characters “.中国”. When converted back into Unicode, it translates to “.china” in English. In Mandarin Chinese, it’s pronounced as “Zhong Guo”.
The IDN ccTLD “.中国” is managed by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). As per the guidelines provided by ICANN, the responsible authority for global domain names, each IDN ccTLD operator must maintain the security and stability of the domain name system (DNS) and have the capability to manage the cultural and linguistic requirements of their respective scripts.
Punycode is designed for the representation of labels in the Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) system, as outlined by IETF’s document “RFC 3492”, enacted in March 2003. It allows for the use of Unicode characters that cannot be directly represented in ASCII. This is important in accommodating internet users who communicate in languages that employ characters not present in the limited ASCII character set.
For instance, the website of the Chinese Central Government is available at the URL “www.gov.cn”, uses “XN—w4rs40l.gov.cn” as its IDN. This shows the practical use of the locale-specific domain name “XN—5TZM5G”.
In conclusion, “XN—5TZM5G” is a unique top-level domain (TLD) assigned to China, which once converted back from Punycode to Unicode, reads as “.中国” or “.china” in English.
Sources used:
1. Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,“IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ““a-z”“. An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ““0-9”“. The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ““ASCII characters”“ (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ““Unicode characters”“ that provides the basis for IDNs. The ““hostname rule”“ requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen “”-”“. The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ““labels”“ (separated by ““dots”“). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ““A-label”“. All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ““U-label”“. The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ““test”“ — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ““ASCII compatible encoding”“ (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn—11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ““LDH label”“. Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as”“icann.org”“ is not an IDN.” (source: ICANN).
1. “RFC 3492 – Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)” (source: IETF).
The China Internet Network Information Center (source: CNNIC).
