Is It Time For .tel?

Vitaly Friedman writes "ICANN, the body responsible for creating top-level domains, is considering a new one. Conceived as a way to easily manage contact information in an age where many people have numerous contact numbers, the proposed .tel TLD would allow individuals and companies to keep all of their contact information in an easily accessible location. Companies would get companyname.tel while individuals would be able to register firstnamelastname.tel." This idea has been kicked around for quite a while; one of the question is the whole name-space collision issue. For instance, there's me and then there's other me. Lemme tell how strange it is getting fan mail for country music stars.

Comments

Re:Unforseen problems

[AlterTick]

The most common male first name worldwide is Mohammed. The most common last name is Chang.

Chang isn't a "last name" in that sense. The east asian tradition is to say your family name first, followed by your individual name. "Chang" is an individual names just like "Mohammed". I have long suspected that "example" was coined by one of those typical smug dolt newspaper columnist types.

Re:Unforseen problems

[AlterTick]

I believe that the most common surname in the world is "Chang" (or "Zhang" depending on how you transliterate the name)

You believe incorrectly. "Chang" is a last name, but not a surname. In China, as in most of east asia, you give your family name first, and your individual name last. This causes a bit of confusion with immigrants, as they end up having to use their individual name as their family name in western countries because the name order is reversed on all the forms. But in China, a person whose name is "Sun-Yung Chang" might have a brother named "Sun-Yung Fong". Get it?