What happened to the .name TLD?

Verisign proposed destroying the entire third level of the .name hierarchy in April 2026 to simplify administration, and ICANN approved on July 28, 2026. Third-level domains like neil.fraser.name are scheduled for termination in February 2027, affecting 22,000 registrants — many whose domains are paid through 2040.

Why does the .name TLD shutdown matter?

Registrants who paid decades in advance lose sites, email, and APIs, and the vacated second-level domains become registerable — letting anyone recreate an old .name address to hijack accounts, commit code with the original owner's authentication, or seize control of IoT devices tied to the domain.

What should .name domain owners do?

Audit email aliases, password resets, API endpoints, and IoT callbacks pointing at .name domains and migrate them before February 2027. ICANN public comment periods are the only defensive lever, and the approval for this shutdown already happened in July 2026.

.name TLD Shutdown: 22,000 Domains Die in February 2027

On September 3, Neil Fraser — Google engineer, creator of Blockly — posted that his 25-year-old neil.fraser.name is being deleted. The domain is paid through 2040. It doesn't matter. In April, Verisign proposed destroying the entire third level of the .name hierarchy "to simplify their administration." ICANN approved on July 28. Registrants only found out in late August, from registrar emails — after the decision was made.

What happened

.name was built as a legitimate third-level operation: you register xxx.yyy.name with a full whois record, exactly like .co.uk or ny.us — nothing like the shady reseller tiers that gave third-level domains a bad name. Verisign's plan kills that entire level, so Fraser's site, his email server, and his API endpoints all vanish in February 2027. He is one of 22,000 registrants losing domains, many paid decades in advance.

Then it gets worse. Once third-level domains are terminated, the vacant second-levels become registerable. Anyone can scoop up fraser.name, recreate neil.fraser.name, and hijack hundreds of accounts tied to a quarter-century of email — code commits, authentication, even IoT devices pointed at the old domain. There is no way to enumerate the blast radius.

Why it matters

This is the clearest signal yet that ICANN treats registrant interests as noise. A registry proposed a cost cut in April; the coordinator approved it in July; the 22,000 people whose property it destroys were informed after the fact. Stable identifiers on the internet are only as stable as the registry operator's willingness to keep them — and nothing legally obligates anyone to protect you when a TLD gets hollowed out from under you.

What .name owners should do

Audit everything still pointing at your .name domains: email aliases, password resets, API endpoints, IoT callbacks. Migrate the survivors before February. And treat ICANN public comment periods as the only defensive lever — this decision landed while the affected parties were still reading their registrar notices.

What happened

Why it matters

What .name owners should do

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