Since 3 May this year, 30 additional characters have been available when registering domain names under the six ccTLDs managed by AFNIC (.FR, .RE, .YT, .PM, .WF and .TF) under a Sunrise period that lasts until 3 July.

Internationalised Domain Name characters that are now available to be used in domain names include é, è, ê, and β.

During the Sunrise period, only existing registrants with an existing domain name in one of the ccTLDs managed Afnic are allowed to register a variation of their domain name using the new characters.

After 3 July, registration will be open to all on a “first come, first served” basis.

Afnic have released an analysis of the initial Sunrise period for the registration of domain names. In the first three hours after opening the registration of IDNs, 32 registrars submitted applications for 1009 domain names with diacritical marks.

Of these “néria.fr” was the first IDN to be registered under .FR TLD by the registrar ASTURIA. And the five most popular new characters “é” (used 926 times), “è”, (118), , “à” and “ô”(25) and “ç” (19).

And some examples provided by Afnic of domain names using the IDNs are gites-bretagne-côté-mer.fr, vannière.fr, kiosqueàdomicile.fr and bpifaçades.fr.

To register your .FR domain name, with IDNs as part of the Sunrise period until 3 July, or without, see Europe Registry here.