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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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One of the silliest attempt at securing an Internet Record is for the longest domain name.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a large village and community on the island of Anglesey in Wales, situated on the Menai Strait next to the Britannia Bridge and across the strait from Bangor. This village has the longest place-name in Europe and one of the longest place names in the world. The short form of the village’s name is Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, also spelled Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll. It is commonly known as Llanfair PG or Llanfairpwll.

The website http://www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch.com/ says that it is he World’s Longest Single Word Domain Name, named after a Welsh Village.

But is it?

Technically, according to the domain registrars, the longest legal domain name  can have up to 63 characters starting with a letter or number (not including sub-domains or suffixes).

The following websites too have the name of the village.

http://www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.co.uk/

http://llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochuchaf.com/

The ending “uchaf” in the above domain name is the welsh for “higher” or “upper”, and refers to the upper (old) part of the village .

I wonder whether any one will type in these long domain names. These sites can only be  reached by clicking links or selecting from a list.

Here is one of a fun long domain names I came across on the net:

http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com/

Another is

http://3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com/

The owners of the website

http://www.thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensomeandthensomemoreandmore.com/

claim that their website has the world’s longest domain name.

Is this a world record?

So, they asked Guinness World Records. And this is the reply they received from Guinness World Records:

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From : <crm@guinnessrecords.com>

To : <email>
Subject : Guinness World Record
Date : Wed, 25 Sep 2002 16:54:32 +0100

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Claim ID: 33140

25 September 2002

Dear Sir
Thank you for sending us the details of your recent record proposal for ‘Registering the worlds longest computer domain name’

After having examined the information you sent, and given full consideration to your proposal, I am afraid we are unable to accept your proposal as a record.

This record is currently rested, which means that no one can attempt this record and become a new record holder. It has been rested because there is no merit whatsoever in this. It takes little to no effort and is similar to taking the largest number in the world and then adding 1 to it.

I appreciate you have gone to a lot of effort, and we are delighted to hear from people around the world with their record claims and suggestions. However, given the sheer scope of the records on our database, and the growing number of people contacting us with record claims and suggestions, we need to exercise some editorial control over
what is and is not accepted as a record.

I appreciate this may be disappointing for you, but I hope this does not deter you from trying again. We are always keen to hear from people who wish to break Guinness World Records. If you should need any advice regarding breaking an existing record, please contact us again quoting the above reference number. Alternatively, you can contact us through our website at:

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com

Once again, thank you for writing. We wish you every success with any future record-breaking endeavours.

Yours sincerely,

Scott Christie
Records Research Services
Guinness World Records