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Registry Operator Name Change

Please note that the English language version of all translated content and documents are the official versions and that translations in other languages are for informational purposes only.

Overview

Over the course of the 10-year term of the Registry Agreement, an organization might change its name. If the change is not the result of a change of control of the registry, the organization needs to utilize the Registry Operator Name Change Service to update its name with the ICANN organization.

As part of Registry Operator Name Change Service, the registry operator must also update its Continued Operations Instrument (COI) to reflect the name change.

  • If the COI is in the form of a Letter of Credit, the ICANN organization will engage with Bank of America to ensure the Letter of Credit is compliant. If Bank of America determines there are deficiencies per standard banking guidelines, the registry operator will be directed to the COI Amendment Service to cure such deficiencies.
  • If the COI is in the form of an escrow agreement, the ICANN organization will review the updated agreement to ensure it is compliant.

Once the ICANN organization validates the name change and determines that it is not the result of a change of control of the registry, an amendment to the Registry Agreement will be executed reflecting the change and updates to the Registry Agreement preamble will be published on the Registry Agreements page. In the case of a contracted party with multiple TLDs, the ICANN organization may elect to issue one amendment with an attachment that lists all of the affected TLDs.

To submit a Registry Operator Name Change Service request, an authorized user must submit a service case via the Naming Services portal. Please see the How to Guide below for additional details on submitting a request.

Resources

Domain Name System
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."