# How do I add a domain that contains special characters?

If you receive the errors `Name contains invalid characters` and `Only valid hostname characters are allows...` when adding your domain name to your DigitalOcean account, your domain name likely contains non-ASCII characters, like accents. This is common for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN).

DNS does not directly support Unicode special characters. To add a domain with non-ASCII characters to DigitalOcean, you need to convert the domain into Punycode. Punycode is an encoding used to convert Unicode characters to ASCII, which is a smaller, restricted character set supported by DNS.

For example, the domain `екампле.цом` is `xn--80ajbsgfv.xn--l1adx` in Punycode. When you add `xn--80ajbsgfv.xn--l1adx` to your DigitalOcean account, users can enter `екампле.цом` in their web browser and access the site. If you try to directly register `екампле.цом` as a domain name in DigitalOcean, you receive an error.

You can convert your domain to Punycode using a tool like [PunyCoder](https://www.punycoder.com). On Linux, you can install `idn` (with `apt install idn`) and use it on the command line (for example, `echo "екампле.цом" | idn`).

## Related Topics

[How do I fix the error "Record is managed by an App on this account, and cannot be deleted"?](https://docs.digitalocean.com/support/how-do-i-fix-the-error-record-is-managed-by-an-app-on-this-account-and-cannot-be-deleted/index.html.md): Use the app’s Settings tab to remove domains associated with App Platform apps.

[Why aren't my vanity DNS name servers resolving?](https://docs.digitalocean.com/support/why-arent-my-vanity-dns-name-servers-resolving/index.html.md): If you use vanity or branded DNS nameservers that delegate to DigitalOcean’s nameservers, you must update to new IP addresses.

[How do I fix the DNS error "Primary Name Server Not Listed at Parent"?](https://docs.digitalocean.com/support/how-do-i-fix-the-dns-error-primary-name-server-not-listed-at-parent/index.html.md): Update your registrar to use DigitalOcean’s name servers.