French Articles in Domain Names

[blastfromthepast]

I'm posting this here, because the other thread got swamped.

It has been claimed that French articles are not good for domain names.

Evidence shows that they are being used:

• lemonde.fr
• l-hotel.com
• delamour.com

Do these sound unnatural to the "native" speaker?

Why would you not register domains with articles?

[Edwin]

That should be "lemonde.fr" ("monde" is masculine)

Here's the thing... people will register anything when their 1st, 2nd, 3rd choice etc. is already gone. If the .com is gone, get the cctld. If that's gone, get the .net. Sometimes things get so bad that people register a ".cc" or a ".ws".

Similarly, people use hyphens or an "e" or "i" in front of a word, for example.

The presence of an article in a French domain does not automatically reduce the value of the domain to ZERO, but it does reduce it. Domain valuations aren't black or white, valuable or zero - they are valued on a continuum.

The argument in the other thread started because the presence of the article wasn't disclosed in the translation, not because it automatically reduced the value to nothing.

Take l-hotel.com for example. It's perfectly fine to build a business site around, but the domain's owner can't possibly expect it to be worth even a tiny fraction of "hotel.com" even though both translate to "hotel" (actually, that's not even strictly true in this case - l'hotel means "the hotel" so the English equivalent of l-hotel.com would be the-hotel.com). The difference in value is probably 10,000x or more. This difference is concealed when a simple one word translation is supplied without additional qualification.

[blastfromthepast]

l-hotel.com is the famous five star «L’Hôtel» hotel chain. L’Hôtel is a trade mark. Yes, it means The Hotel. From the English name, it makes you wonder, why would somoene choose such a stupid name - The Hotel. Obviously, it sounds a lot better in French, otherwise, the name wouldn't have been chosen.

The New York Times doesn't use thenewyorktimes.com, although that domain forwards to the real one, nytimes.com. Clearly, the word "the" is rarely used in English URLs.

In French, the opposite is true. Monde.fr forwards to lemonde.fr. Why? Because the French obviously prefer the article as part of the name.

The argument that they got lemonde.fr as a second choice because they couldn't get monde.fr simply doesn't hold. They have it. They choose not to use it.

[Edwin]

In the case of "le monde" the name came LONG before the domain. Many other similar cases. So of course they're going to register the most accurate domain to represent the brand they've built up.

[thegenius1]

Originally Posted by Edwin

In the case of "le monde" the name came LONG before the domain. Many other similar cases. So of course they're going to register the most accurate domain to represent the brand they've built up.

Hmm thats interesting wonder why they chose to Brand this name in the first place ? , i guess one would have to assume that monde was already trademarked LOL

[idnceo]

i agree this is a mess with latin languages, for instance it is not only if to add the article or not, but sometimes the plural is much better than the singular. Also many words are better compound using particle "of", famous for us, nom de domaine is better than domaine, even when it is long.

[yanni]

Originally Posted by thegenius1

Hmm thats interesting wonder why they chose to Brand this name in the first place ? , i guess one would have to assume that monde was already trademarked LOL

LeMonde is the most famous French newspapers. Been around for years.

Kinda like "TheTimes"

Most newspapers in many parts of the world use the article in front of the name:

The Daily Gazette, The Los Angeles Times, etc.

If you check FR overture for the "le", most of the results belong to newspapers.
(At least that was the case last time I checked)

[blastfromthepast]

l’amour.com is now getting traffic. Proves the naysayers wrong.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by blastfromthepast

l’amour.com is now getting traffic. Proves the naysayers wrong.

You don't want to talk to those guys. They traffic crap like dot mobi!

[touchring]

Originally Posted by blastfromthepast

l’amour.com is now getting traffic. Proves the naysayers wrong.

Pardon for a foolish question, but how do people enter the ’ mark?

[blastfromthepast]

Originally Posted by touchring

Pardon for a foolish question, but how do people enter the ’ mark?

It is easy on a Mac, maybe hard to do on a PC with the English keyboard layout, maybe easier for some other languages.

They seem to manage fine, about one a day this month, and a few click throughs.

Due to a change in rules, these kinds of domains can no longer be registered.

I missed out on Hawai`i.com (the official spelling), as well.

The greater issue is that ‘ and ’ are used in some languages as independent letters, such as in Ukrainian, making many Ukrainian words impossible to register.

[touchring]

This ’ isn't the apostrophe ' ?

[brianluedke]

Originally Posted by Edwin

In the case of "le monde" the name came LONG before the domain. Many other similar cases. So of course they're going to register the most accurate domain to represent the brand they've built up.

Parlez-vous français? Je n'arrive pas a y croire.

[blastfromthepast]

Monsieur Edwin a étudié le français à l’école? N’est pas?

[domainpredator]

hi,
I'm new here and I'm French (don't say it too loud :-))
Regarding articles, I agree with Edwin. The main rule is "forget them". Le Monde is a name, nothing to do with the article/no article debate. Same as "La Baule (French beach resort) or Le Havre (biggest French harbour).
In some cases (mostly general ideas, not things), adding an article could add up to the value of a domain name. lamour.com would have been almost as good as amour.com if there had not been the apostrophe. Letravail.com (the work) is according to me almost as good travail.com
voilà !
david