Why Numbers Are Preferred Over Letters In Domains In China

For most of us, remembering a string of numbers in a domain name is more difficult than a string of letters that make usually make up a word or words. But in China they’re more familiar with numbers than Latin characters. Hence, as a recent article in New Republic outlines, there are many more domains made up of numbers than in western countries.

And it’s one reason why internationalised new gTLDs are likely to do well in countries where languages such as Arabic are popular, and in China. Many people are not familiar with Latin characters.

The article notes “the digits in a domain name usually aren’t random. The Internet company NetEase uses the web address 163.com — a throwback to the days of dial-up when Chinese Internet users had to enter 163 to get online. The phone companies China Telecom and China Unicom simply reappropriated their well-known customer service numbers as domain names, 10086.cn and 10010.cn, respectively.”

“Digits are even more convenient when you consider that the words for numbers are homophones for other words. The URL for the massive e-commerce site Alibaba, for example, is 1688.com, pronounced ‘yow-leeyoh-ba-ba’ — close enough! Those digits can just as often have individual meanings. The video sharing site 6.cn works because the word for ‘six’ is a near-homophone for the word ‘to stream.’ The number five is pronounced wu, which sounds like wo, which means ‘I.’ The number one is pronounced yao, which with a different tone means ‘want.'”

To read the New Republic article in full, see:
www.newrepublic.com/article/117608/chinese-number-websites-secret-meaning-urls