Having recently been thinking about a new project, I started looking at available domains and was attracted to Macedonian .me domains as both useful and playful in what you work into them.

Going to my usual domain registrar, I bought itsnotyouits.me (in retrospect, not the most memorable domain so I’m kind of glad things worked out as they did…) and waited a couple of days for the DNS change to propagate. And a couple of days more, and then a couple more for good measure. Regardless of how many times I checked my typing, every time I pointed my browser at the domain it didn’t go to a landing page – it couldn’t be resolved.

Checking the Macedonian domain register, I found the following message:

The domain itsnotyouits.me is a Governmental Reserved Name and is available for registration only by eligible applicants.

This wasn’t mentioned when I purchased the domain, but when I called the domain name registrar they said the registration had been refused (and by the way, we’ll get a refund out to you immediately). Unless “It’s not you it’s” is Macedonian for Ministry of Defence, or maybe something unflattering about a prominent government figure, I can’t work out why it would be refused. Indeed, various other predictable domain names with give-or-take four letters seem to have been happily sold.

Any ideas?