Tell HN: Remember to migrate away from .name domain

Worth noting, this doesn't affect domain.name, thus 2nd level domains. I was actually unaware you could directly register a 3rd level domain... Got my .name in the sunrise phase of .name, though it later rendered obsolete by name change on marriage (but still got it).

I'm curious, why were people interested in these .name domains? john.smith.name is weird. Why not just get Johnsmith.me or net or whatever?

Were they charging a fractional rate since you were getting a fractional domain? If it was $3 USD per year, I could see the appeal for some.

Biggest rug pull in the history of dns

I'm not sure I get it. If anyone registers a domain first.second.name then you are basically registering a subdomain under second.name, right? You don't own anything, second.name owns your subdomain and can do whatever they want with it

In case you haven't heard about this, see https://domainnamewire.com/2026/09/03/third-level-dot-name/

Why re they doing this? Looks stupid to me.

Consider editing title to be "Tell HN:" Thank you for the PSA!

Wait, so if you own Johnson.name you and use John.Johnson.name as your web address, that will stop working?

Unrelated. What happened with .io? Didn’t they say they would disappear or did that change?

I have a second level and I’m in the process too. This kind of shitty behaviour warrants bankruptcy.

I had a .name domain since its birth. Then proceeded to loose it because of bad luck and bad planning.

I tried to retrieve it but after a week of back and forth exchanges (mostly back from my side) I gave up.

Moved to .fr hoping that it will be stable (price wise) as a national TLD - so far so good.

tbh, as an owner of a .name (tld) I don't understand how this worked in the real world.

I have subdomains like {myfirstname}.{lastname}.name ... {lastname}.name is mine

So obviously {myfirstname}.{lastname}.name is a subdomain...

Could someone now have bought {myfirstname}.{lastname}.name and DNS would go to their page?

If so, I find the new behaviour way more sane...

If I wanted to sell a subdomain, I could do this, no questions asked. I just point the subdomain to another IP.

But I pay for {lastname}.name so it should be mine, just like any other .tld I have!

Soo... people actually used it?

Jesus Christ. In 25 years of working on the Web, this is the first time I'm hearing of "third level domains". WTF? Where and when did this come from?

No shade to the folks being harmed by this situation. Sorry. I'm just really non-plussed at the idea that the registrar is charging for what looks like should be a DNS prefix.

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