Today, at 10 am CEST (at midday in Moscow), the .ЕЮ top-level domain opened for registration, as reported by the official website of the domain’s registrar, EURid, a non-commercial organization. EURid is also the registry of the European domain name .EU, while .ЕЮ is its internationalized Cyrillic version. The domain is designed for users from Russia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia and other countries that use the Cyrillic script. EURid representatives referred to the domain launch as one of the key events in the registrar’s history.
The .ЕЮ combination of letters is a direct Cyrillic transliteration of .EU. However, while the Latin-script name of the European domain is directly associated with Europe and the European Union, the .ЕЮ domain does not trigger such associations for Russian-speaking users, which numerous observers have repeatedly pointed out. The wittiest of them said that creative users could use the domain to register some funny names, such as худ.ею, умн.ею, хорош.ею, etc.
