.gourd
Is .gourd a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .gourd, as of 7 October 2026. One applicant claimed it and is out. We keep the entry on the record either way.
- Journey To The West
A novelty word ending with no real market beyond gourd hobbyists and myth-themed fan projects; almost no serious brand value.
gourd growers, harvest-craft artisans, and fans of Chinese mythology (the magic gourd motif) wanting a playful themed address; not a buyer group with commercial naming budgets
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round. Their catalog line: “The vessel said to hold magic and medicine.”
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: a single narrow natural-subject noun wagering that a passionate hobbyist community plus a small specialist trade will move their primary identity onto the thing's own name, with no corporate anchor tenant to underwrite it.
Same horticultural-identity bet — growers, suppliers, societies and enthusiasts as the registrant base — differing mainly in that it is the umbrella category rather than one crop inside it.
Structurally the closest single-foodstuff common noun on the list, but its bet was one dominant producer fencing off a product word, not an open grower community claiming a crop name.
What a .gourd domain is
.gourd is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Culture category. Nobody is chasing .gourd today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .gourd domain extension real yet?
.gourd is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. Nobody has applied for it on the public record; the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round is the process that would decide whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .gourd domain?
You can’t yet. A .gourd name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .gourd was .horse, delegated on 31 March 2014.
Is .gourd a real TLD?
Not yet. .gourd is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .gourd and is no longer in it. We keep the entry, and every entry on this page links to its source.
- Journey To The West · now abandonedICANN
- Journey To The West · first recordedJourney To The West Corporation
“.gourd · Imperial & Myth · “The vessel said to hold magic and medicine.””Journey To The West Corporation
- The string is a narrow dictionary noun for a plant/vessel; by analogy (flagged as analogy) with other single-plant or single-animal gTLDs such as .horse or .garden, which saw thin registration bases and negligible aftermarkets, .gourd should expect shallow, hobbyist-driven demand over the next 5 years. The applicant's catalog frames it as a Chinese-myth symbol (the magic-and-medicine vessel), which could give it modest cultural resonance in Chinese-speaking markets, but the ASCII English word does not carry that meaning to most buyers. It sits in the 10-29 band: above 1-9 because a small real community (gourd craft, harvest brands, myth-themed projects) exists, but below 30-49 because there is no plausible volume or price-driven registration engine and the brand signal is close to zero for serious primary identities. Applicant facts are stated neutrally: it is one string in a published 323-string portfolio, which informs only expectations about per-string marketing depth. Main market uncertainty: whether the operator targets Chinese cultural symbolism (the auspicious hulu motif) with pricing and marketing that could create a small themed niche, versus leaving it a shelf string.