.smith
Is .smith a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.smith is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Dotstrategy Co..
A vanity address for people and firms named Smith, plus craft hacks like lock.smith; memorable, but rarely a serious main identity.
people and family businesses carrying the Smith surname, plus -smith trades and brands (locksmiths, goldsmiths, wordsmith-style studios) wanting a hack-style address
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 almost exactly: an extremely common family name run as an open registry whose value comes from millions of unaffiliated individuals wanting a label they already carry, with no single entity able to claim ownership of the word.
Also sells a shared self-identifier to a large, ungoverned population of individuals who will put their personal identity on it, so it lives or dies on the same mass-market identity demand rather than on any corporate anchor tenant — it just identifies by heritage rather than by surname.
Targets the same buyer — a household registering its own name as its primary identity — and depends on consumers paying for personal rather than commercial namespace, though it is a category noun anyone can use rather than a label only some people are entitled to.
What a .smith domain is
.smith is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Culture. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .smith domain extension real yet?
.smith is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. It is a string applicants have put forward in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, the process that decides whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .smith domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .smith name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .smith was .kim, delegated on 23 January 2014.
Is .smith a real TLD?
Not yet. .smith is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .smith is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Dotstrategy Co. · first recordedICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow). The string works two ways: as a very common English-language surname (john.smith) and as the suffix of craft trades (lock.smith, gold.smith, word.smith). The record shows one standard application by Dotstrategy Co. (confirmed, ICANN application ID DC2669T-T68341) and no category tag; nothing on the record indicates a community or trade-association backing. By analogy with .name, the earlier personal-name namespace, surname-style TLDs have tended to draw vanity registrations with weak renewal and little aftermarket, and individuals rarely run a serious project on them as a primary identity. By analogy with hack-friendly strings such as .ninja, .guru and .rocks, the craft-word hack is a real but small segment: a locksmith or jewelry studio may buy it as a memorable redirect, but the .com stays the primary identity. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no volume or price-driven registration engine over the next 5 years: the buyer pool is bounded by one surname and a handful of -smith trades, and a trade buyer who wants a brand signal usually already has a descriptive .com or a .locksmith-style alternative. It is not in the 1-9 band because the buyer pool is identifiable and real (surname holders, -smith trades, personal-brand sites), and the hack is instantly understood without explanation. Main market uncertainty: whether the craft-word hack (lock.smith, gold.smith, silver.smith) turns into a commercial segment that trades hold as primary identity, which would lift it toward the low 30s, or whether demand stays surname vanity, which would keep it near 20. Registration counts, pricing and launch timing are unknown; all comparisons here are by analogy.