.de
| DEnic | |
| Introduced | 1986 |
|---|---|
| TLD type | Country code top-level domain |
| Status | Active |
| Registry | DENIC |
| Sponsor | None |
| Intended use | Entities connected with  Germany |
| Actual use | Very popular in Germany |
| Registration restrictions | Must have administrative contact resident in Germany |
| Structure | May register at second level |
| Dispute policies | DISPUTE-Entries |
| Registry website | denic.de |
.de is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Federal Republic of Germany. DENIC (the Network Information Centre responsible for .de domains) does not require specific second-level domains, as it is the case with the .uk domain range for example.
The name is based on the first two letters of the German name for Germany (Deutschland). Prior to 1989, East Germany had a separate ISO 3166-1 code (dd) but it was never assigned its own ccTLD; de is the only German ccTLD that ever existed.
In Spanish, French, Romanian and Portuguese "de" is the genitive form (like "of" in English), so there are a lot of Latin-speakers hosters that offer customized sites like elforo.de (theforum.of) or elblog.de (theblog.of), putting your name after it (example: elforo.de/wikipedia theforum.of/wikipedia)[1].
.de is currently the most popular ccTLD in terms of number of registrations, and is second after .com among all TLDs.[1].
The first point of registration for .de domains was at the Dortmund University Department of Computer Science. uni-dortmund.de was among the first registered .de-domains.
.de registrations may be directly ordered from DENIC but it is faster and cheaper to do so via a DENIC member (registrar).
The domain name must have at least 3 letters, not only numbers and may not be a German license plate code. The only current known exceptions are db.de (Deutsche Bahn), ix.de, and hq.de which have only 2 letters and were registered before the 3 letter rule was put into practise.
Registrations of internationalized domain names are also accepted (see details).