May 5 has now become a titled date in Armenia’s digital calendar for 12 years — the birthday of the Armenian-script .հայ domain.
Armenia’s new Armenian-language internet address, .հայ, was delegated in 2014 and launched on May 5, 2016. From that day, Armenia became one of the few countries that began making its language and alphabet recognizable within the global Domain Name System (DNS).
Before that, website addresses were written and registered in Latin script, such as .am or other domains. The launch of .հայ made it possible to register web addresses fully in Armenian script, for example: ծաղկաձոր.հայ, մագաղաթ.հայ, and even email addresses such as ձմեռ.պապ@հայ.
However, it was necessary not only to develop technical solutions, but also to ensure that Armenian letters would be recognized by global internet systems, and that all domain names and email addresses — regardless of language or script — would function equally across all platforms.
Among the first to join the global Universal Acceptance movement, aimed at solving these challenges, was the Internet Society NGO — the registry operator of .am and .հայ domains.
From the very beginning, the organization undertook the creation, launch, and development of the .հայ domain and has worked for years together with ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and other international partners in the field.
Technically, .հայ is an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN). This is the term used for domains written in national scripts such as Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian, and others. The number of IDNs worldwide is growing, though their full adoption still remains a challenge.
Nevertheless, .հայ is more than just a domain. It is the starting point for the full use of Armenian letters on the internet, as well as a key and increasingly recognizable part of Armenia’s digital identity.
The more Armenian-script web addresses, Armenian-language websites, and Armenian digital services there are — and the more high-quality Armenian content exists online as a linguistic foundation for Artificial Intelligence (AI) models — the more visible, representative, and usable the Armenian language becomes in the global digital environment.
Register your Armenian-script domain in .հայ, become part of the community expanding Armenian presence online and building a multilingual internet.
