[brianluedke]

Despite my persistant efforts to help everyone understand French domain names, there are still some difficult students. Some people do not understand that in French, nouns mean nothing without the article. You would never see a book, for example, with the title "Afrique". It would have to be "L'Afrique". Similarly, domain names should include the article to make sense in the French context, especially if it is a single word noun being used, and not multiple word combinations.

Other people confuse France with certain other countries, where the national domain dominates. Although the French do use the ".fr", the .com is also huge, especially for companies seeking a wider market than just their own region. Since Francophonie includes dozens of countries on five continents, that is usually the case.

Still others insist -- apparently without any evidence to back their case -- that an apostrophe is terribly confusing. "Le" is masculine "the", "La" is "feminine" -- but if the noun starts with a vowel, you simply combine the article with the noun with an apostrophe. Far from creating confusion (everyone knows apostrophes cannot be included in domain names, so where is the confusion?), this actually makes the noun and article even more inseparable.

In five minutes of browsing, I came across five major Web sites -- sites Francophones use on an hourly basis -- that combine the .com, plus the article, not to mention a would-be accent. I could easily include hundreds more that include one or two of these attributes, if not all three. (Part of the problem in finding these sites with ideal domain names is that I already have half of them locked up.)

lentreprise.com -- L'Entreprise
("Company" or "The Company")

lavion.com -- L'Avion
("Plane" or "The Plane")

lexpansion.com -- L'expansion
("Expansion" or "The Expansion", an economic newspaper with "l'économie au quotidien" as their motto, or "The Economy day by day". See leconomie.com below.)

leconomiste.com - L'Economiste
("Economist" or "The Economist")

lactualite.com - L'Actualité
("News" or "The News")

leurope.com - L'Europe
("Europe")

lafrique.com - L'Afrique
("Africa")

leconomie.com - L'Economie
("Economy" or "The Economy")

Oops. Those last three were a self-promotion -- sorry!

To earn my rights here at the IdnForums, let me add this one...

léconomie.com