gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.spa	Asia Spa and Wellness Promotion Council Limited	tld.asia	View

Following from #20b “Relationship and Appropriateness of the Selected TLD string with the Community”, the selected TLD string “spa” perfectly matches with the name as well as the philosophy of the spa and wellness community.

1. Name

“Spa” is the name for which the community is commonly known by others. Almost all the associations in the community uses the word “spa” as a distinctive element in its name. The activity or its facilities are sometimes known as “bath” or “springs” (more common in the past), but in the present day, the predominant trend is to use the name “spa”.

The community often identifies itself as the “spa and wellness” community. The Registry has studied the different possibilities for representing the community with a TLD string, including for example, .spa, .well, .wellness, .saw, etc. None of the alternatives come close to the choice of “.spa” as a short, representative and meaningful representation of a key distinctive spirit and cohesion describing the community.

2. Identify

The applied for string: “spa” closely describes the community and the community members. Almost all the associations in the community uses the word “spa” as a distinctive element in its name. Many members of the community, i.e. spa operators and providers include or integrate the word “spa” in its own company name, and almost all of them include the word “spa” in the description of their business.

Based on research conducted by the Registry, we are aware that the string “spa” is also used in three other contexts:
- the municipality of Spa in Belgium
- the short form of ʺSocietà Per Azioniʺ means “stock corporation” in Italy and is often denoted in the short form: ʺS.p.A.ʺ
- the short form of ʺSpondyloarthropathyʺ, a medical term for any joint disease of the vertebral column

While the municipality of Spa in Belgium was likely the inspiration of the use of the term “spa” in its present day meaning as a generic description, the .spa TLD is not intended to serve the town of Spa in Belgium. The registry is also aware of the use of the term “S.p.A.” to mean ʺSocietà Per Azioniʺ (i.e. stock corporation) in Italy, as well as a short form of the medical term “Spondyloarthropathy”. Neither of which is associated with the use of the term “spa” in its most accepted meaning and the meaning for which the .spa TLD intends. Furthermore their usage is significantly less prevalent than the use of the term “spa” in its present day generic descriptive meaning. As such, the registry does not believe that the use of the term over-reaches substantially beyond the community.

Further explanation is provided in 4. Uniqueness below and further policies to mitigate its use for other possible designations are further discussed in #20e, #22 and #29.

3. Nexus

Most people inside and outside the spa community refer to spas and the spa community with the word “spa” as a distinctive descriptor. The location for which a member of the community operates is called a spa; a member of the community is often called simply a spa or in a more industrial descriptor a spa operator; and, products and services of members of the community are described as spa products and spa services. All of which utilizes the word “spa” as a distinctive element.

The word “spa” is the noun that the typical community member would naturally be called in the context. The term “spa” is not excessively broad and relates to the primary community of about 40,000 spas around the world, along with the community organizations, whose members are generally these operational spas.

4. Uniqueness

According to historians, the word spa has been a generic description since at least 1596 or perhaps as early as in the 1300s. The global public in general would refer to the word “spa” in its meaning as offered by the Dictionary.com:
1. a mineral spring, or a locality in which such springs exist.
2. a luxurious resort or resort hotel.
3. health spa.
4. a hot tub or similar warm-water hydromassage facility, usually for more than one person.
5. New England . soda fountain.

And Wikipedia (http:⁄⁄en.wikipedia.org⁄wiki⁄Spa):
“The term spa is associated with water treatment which is also known as balneotherapy. Spa towns or spa resorts (including hot springs resorts) typically offer various health treatments.”

Understanding that the string “spa” is being used in other contexts, the Registry has done further research to assert that the word is predominantly used in a general point of view with the meaning as associated with the spa community.

In order to establish that the term “spa” is used on the Internet predominantly with the meaning for which is associated with spas as in places offering water treatment and holistic body, mind and spirit revitalization sessions, the following basic search exercise was conducted at the Google search engine:

Searching the keyword: “spa” minus “-belgium” in Google returned about 4,020,000,000 results;
Searching the keyword: “spa” minus “-italy” in Google returned about 3,880,000,000 results;
Searching the keywords: “spa” and “health” in Google returned about 537,000,000 results;
Searching the keywords: “spa” and “Belgium” in Google returned about 108,000,000 results;
Searching the keywords: “spa” and specifying “Italian” as the language in Google returned about 263,000,000 results;
Searching the keywords: “spa” and “Spondyloarthropathy” in Google returned about 168,000 results
Searching the keywords: “spa” and “soda fountain” in Google returned about 2,340,000 results

Based on the results, it can be seen that by taking away either “belgium” or “italy” as part of the search term, the total number of results returned (about 4 Billion) is significantly over the number if they were included as part of the search (about 100 Million). On further analysis of the results, for those even including the terms “belgium” or “italy” the results are predominantly related to spas as understood in general and as a designator identifying the community. Given that the town of Spa is relatively small with a total population of only around 10,000, and that the origins of the use of the word “spa” in its present day meaning relates to the town’s own spas, the Registry believes that it should not take away from the fact the only significant meaning of the term “spa” is the one for which the Registry intends to promote.

The use of “S.p.A.” as a short form for the Italian form of stock corporation: ʺSocietà Per Azioniʺ is also relatively much less prevalent than the word as intended for the spa community. Furthermore, a more proper and popular way of denoting the form of corporation is “S.p.A.” with the periods included. While this is an important usage of the string “SpA”, the Registry believes that it should not take away from the significant meaning of the word “spa” in its intended use for the spa community as a TLD. Furthermore, additional preventive measures can be put in place to mitigate against any concerns for abusive utilization of the TLD in this manner.

The use of “SpA” as a short form for the medical term “Spondyloarthropathy” is not popular among the general public (with only 168,000 results returned). As this is a very specialized use of the term for the medical profession, the Registry does not believe that it represents a significant over-reach.

Finally, the use of “spa” for soda fountains can be understood as an adaptation, from its popular meaning as intended by the Registry, i.e. the element of a water spring. Therefore again, the Registry believes that this meaning does not form a substantive usage of the word and therefore should not be considered a significant over-reach beyond the community.

In summary, none of the other uses of the string “spa” carries another significant meaning in the common language used in the community and in the global general public as a whole.

gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.gay	dotgay llc	spimarketing.com	View

Like most words in most languages, “gay” has an interesting and complicated history that moves across cultures, definitions and meanings before eventually settling on one culturally agreed upon definition, the definition that refers to the Gay Community as defined in section 20a. Etymology is an often disputed and tangled science, and “gay,” like virtually every word that originates and has been imported into the English language, has shifted meaning over time before becoming today’s word.

Early uses of the word gay

The Anglo-Norman gai and gaye, along with the Middle French gai was used as early as the second half of the 11th century throughout Western Europe to refer to people and incidents that ranged from happy and cheerful to those that would be described as carefree, frivolous and later even licentious, lewd and lascivious (OED). At the risk of oversimplification, the various regional variants of “gay” throughout the middle ages generally focused on “gay” as a sense relating to a variety of qualities ranging from noble and beautiful to bright, and lively (all in use in the 1300s). At a time when mass communication was non-existent, it is understandable that the same word could have so many simultaneous meanings that would vary regionally. As an example, “gay” at various moments in time would refer to “finely dressed,” simply those people who could be described as “carefree,” and to other divergent meanings ranging from the science of poetry to a description of a dog’s tail carried high and erect (OED).

In the 1400s, “gay” was widely in use to refer to “Wanton, lewd, lascivious” behavior. This sense of gay as “dedicated to social pleasures” or “frivolous” and “hedonistic” behaviors helps shed light on the transition of “gay” from its earlier 12th-15th century meanings to the modern and dominant understanding of gay as both a noun and adjective referring to a specific group of individuals whose gender identities and sexual orientation are outside of the norms defined for heterosexual behavior of the larger society, and thus were judged harshly by that society.

Gay used to for homosexuality

As cited in the OED, “Gay by the early 20th century progressed to its current reference to a sexuality that was non-heterosexual. Writing in 1953, D.W. Cory explains: “In France as early as the sixteenth century the homosexual was called gaie; significantly enough, the feminine form was used to describe the male. The word made its way to England and America, and was used in print in some of the more pornographic literature after the First World War. Psychoanalysts recorded that homosexual patients were calling themselves gay in the nineteen-twenties, and certainly by the nineteen-thirties it was the most common word in use among homosexuals themselves” (qtd. in OED).

Language is anything but stable and fixed. All words in all languages across the globe shift meaning over time and “gay” is certainly no exception to this rule. What this brief etymology of the term suggests however is that at least since the early 20th century “gay” had morphed from describing a serious of attributes ranging from lively, to happy, to sexually promiscuous that coalesced around a particular gender identity. Notably this transition of usage of “gay,” while commonly thought to be a US American invention was actually a global undertaking. The word “gay,” in fact, is used without any translation in a diverse set of world languages including French, Italian, Portuguese and many Spanish-speaking nations. In many other languages, including German, while a unique translation of gay exists officially, “Schwul,” absolutely all German-speaking individuals would understand the English translation “gay” and most are using it. Not surprisingly, the availability of global communications technologies, like the Internet, has made agreed-upon definitions of terms like “gay” possible. Whereas once regional, national and other localized variations would be able to survive, today’s instant and global communications infrastructure makes cohesion around particular meanings more inevitable.

Gay as an umbrella term

The term “gay” today is a term that has solidified around encompassing several sub-communities of individuals whose gender identities and sexual orientation are outside of the norms defined for heterosexual behavior of the larger society. Within these sub-communities even further classifications and distinctions can be made that further classify its members but are equally comfortable identifying as gay, particularly to those outside their own sub-communities. As an example, it has become commonplace for celebrities to acknowledge their homosexuality with the now routine declaration of “Yup, I’m gay” on the cover of newsmagazines as the comedienne Ellen Degeneres did when she “came out” on the cover of TIME magazine.

Notably, “gay” is used to super-identify all these groups and circumstances. Whether homosexual, bisexual, transgender, intersex or ally, all members of the Gay Community march in the “gay pride parade” read the same “gay media” and fight for the same “gay rights.” Gay has become the prevalent term in how members of this community refer to themselves when speaking about themselves as demonstrated by the large number of organizations that use the term globally.

Gay means gay

While it is true that “gay” has at various points in history signified other meanings, the current definition is not only the most prominent and widely used, but also the most stable that indicates permanence and longevity. Not only are other uses of the term gay archaic (e.g. the gay nineties), they also do not name any communities. When references are made to the Gay Community, there can be not confusion for any other possible meaning of the term. At the present time the string “gay” when used as a noun is understood to indicate a member of the Gay Community (as defined in section 20a) and has no other meaning. This is not only true in the English language it is true in all other languages where the word gay is used to indicate a member of the Gay Community.

As a word in the modern lexicon, the word gay has only one meaning as a noun – to be a member of the Gay Community. As an adjective, however, it still has meanings that have largely slipped into archaic or historic use. To understand other possible meetings of the term in the English language, one needs to test using substitution as is often done in language theory (eg. can the word ‘happy’ be substituted for the word ‘gay’ in the normal sentence). When one utters the phrase ‘I think he is gay’ one cannot assume the substituted ‘I think he is happy’. And if there were to be any question, it would be followed up with something such as: do you mean gay as in ‘gay’ or do you mean gay as in ‘happy’? The initial presumption is that gay refers to a member of the Gay Community.

Additionally while there are a few historical references such as Gay Nineties – reference to the 1890s, there are very few remaining uses, and there is no chance of the term being misunderstood in the context of gTLD usage. In the context of new gTLD applications, the name does not have any connotation beyond the Gay Community. The idea that one would look at a domain such as lawyer.gay or health.gay and misunderstand that to mean lawyer.happy or health.happy is inconceivable.

OED – Oxford English Dictionary