Any place where I can register two lettered domain names? [closed]

Question

I am looking for something like ma.tt , is.gd etc. Is there some site that allows this. My attempts on GoDaddy are always yielding an "Invalid Domain name".

Answer 1

When you look up a website, each section of the address is a different level of domain resolution. The last bit, after the final period, is called the top-level domain, and those are controlled by IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

Not just anything is a valid, routable top-level domain. See this TLD list for info on available domains. is.gd, for example, uses the .gd which is the country domain for Grenada.

Note that many domains carry restrictions on registration, including organization type, location, and registrar. If you're looking to register a country domain, I suggest picking one, then googling ".gd official registrar" or whatever to find authorized registrars for the domain.

Contacting the official registrar will not only get you info on what domains are available, but will also let you find out if the domain you want has been unlocked from its initial auto-reservation (all two letter second-level domains, like aa.gd, are currently auto-reserved to avoid confusion with country codes and other issues). That unlocking is at the discretion of the authority delegated to by IANA.

Answer 2

Godaddy's automatic "invalid name" response may be due to ICANN's default reservation of two-character 2nd-level domain names:

B. Additional Second-Level Reservations.
In addition, the following names shall be reserved at the second level:

• [...]
• All two-character labels shall be initially reserved. The reservation of a two-character label string shall be released to the extent that the Registry Operator reaches agreement with the government and country-code manager, or the ISO 3166 maintenance agency, whichever appropriate.The Registry Operator may also propose release of these reservations based on its implementation of measures to avoid confusion with the corresponding country codes.

This means that all two-character domains in .com, .net, .org, etc are currently reserved (meaning not for sale) or old registrations (grandfathered in because they were already registered when this restriction was put in place).

This may be overridden by the operator of a given TLD. Each ccTLD manager (see the ICANN database) may have its own requirements and restrictions for what constitutes valid domain names under their particular ccTLD.

So you'll have to do some legwork to find out what names you'd want are still available, whether they're valid under a particular ccTLD, and where to get them.

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Let's look at one of your examples, ma.tt. The .tt TLD is the ccTLD for the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago. The ccTLD manager (read: "official registrar") is http://www.nic.tt/ . According to them, ma.tt is already registered (from nic.tt's search form):

Domain Name             ma.tt
Registrant Name         (redacted)
Expiration Date         01-12-2010

Answer 3

You can go to sites like Speednames that offer not just the usual .com/.net/.org top-level domains but many international TLDs as well.