.monkeyking
Is .monkeyking a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .monkeyking, 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 fan-culture novelty; sites about the Monkey King legend will almost always pick a mainstream domain instead.
fans, indie game studios, and entertainment marketers riffing on the Sun Wukong / Journey to the West legend, mostly for campaign or hobby sites rather than primary identities
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round. Their catalog line: “The trickster hero of China's greatest legend.”
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 mythical creature name that nobody owns and no industry is defined by, so the registry is selling borrowed connotation to anyone who wants that flavor rather than serving a pre-existing category of registrants.
Also a legendary archetype sold as evocative brand fuel, carrying an implied heritage constituency the way Monkey King carries a Chinese-culture one, with the same risk that mythos affection does not convert into primary-identity registrations.
The same wager that a beloved, unowned cultural touchstone of one civilization can be enclosed as a namespace and pull in that culture's diaspora and commerce on reverence alone.
What a .monkeyking domain is
.monkeyking is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Culture. Nobody is chasing .monkeyking today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .monkeyking domain extension real yet?
.monkeyking 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 .monkeyking domain?
You can’t yet. A .monkeyking name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens.
Is .monkeyking a real TLD?
Not yet. .monkeyking is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .monkeyking 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
“.monkeyking · Journey & Legend · “The trickster hero of China's greatest legend.””Journey To The West Corporation
- This lands in the 10-29 vanity/narrow band: the string is an 11-character English rendering of a single legendary character, which caps it as a themed novelty rather than a namespace. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no plausible volume driver — no profession, product category, or geography registers under it, and by analogy long single-concept culture TLDs (e.g. mythology- or entertainment-flavored strings) have historically seen thin registration bases and near-zero primary-identity use (analogy, no figures asserted). It is above the 1-9 band because the legend has genuine global fan and gaming resonance, so occasional campaign, fan-site, and merch registrations are realistic over 5 years. The Chinese-market angle cuts against it too: the natural audience is Chinese-speaking, but the string is English, and by analogy Chinese businesses overwhelmingly default to mainstream ASCII TLDs rather than themed ones (analogy). My main market uncertainty is whether any sizable game or media franchise built on the legend would ever anchor marketing on this TLD, which is the only path to real demand.