Domain guides
Domains with accented and non-Latin characters
The DNS knows only Latin letters, digits and the hyphen. An address such as żółć.pl exists thanks to a translation step: the browser converts it into an encoded form beginning with xn--, and that is what travels across the network.
How the translation works
A name with national characters is converted by a defined standard into characters the DNS accepts. The user sees the readable address, the servers see the encoded one, and both refer to the same domain.
The encoded version is longer than what you typed. For longer names you therefore need to check it still fits within DNS length limits — that is the only hard technical constraint.
The price difference is trivial
Registries that support these names charge either the same fee or a small premium; in Poland an accented .pl name costs a few złoty more to register and exactly the same to renew.
The real cost of an internationalised name is somewhere else entirely.
Where they cause friction
Dictating an address over the phone. Email — not every mail server handles a domain with national characters. Older business systems, forms and analytics tools that store the address in its xn-- form and stop being readable to anyone.
Appearance matters too: some browsers display certain internationalised addresses in encoded form, as a defence against names that imitate well-known brands using similar-looking characters from other alphabets.
The sensible compromise
If your brand genuinely contains a national character, register both forms, use the plain one as your primary address and redirect the other. That costs one extra renewal a year and saves a great many spelling explanations.
If the name works without accents, an internationalised version adds nothing.
Reviewed: 28 August 2026 · DomainsNavigator Editorial Team