What do these letters mean: L, N, C, V, etc.?

Within the domain name community, there are some letters that are used to represent classes of individual characters that can appear within a domain name.

As an example, you may see "LLLL .com" written, which means any four-letter domain name that ends with .com, such as Bing.com. However, the letters must be ASCII letters: A to Z in uppercase and a to z in lowercase.

Definitions:

• Requester: Someone who is requesting a specific class of domain names for consideration or purchase.
  
• C: An ASCII character (e.g., A to Z and 0 to 9; includes a dash: -) that is allowed within a domain name. All other characters in other languages do not qualify unless the writer (e.g., requester) makes an exception that specifically allows them.
• L: An ASCII letter (e.g., A to Z) that is allowed within a domain name. All other letters in other languages do not qualify unless the writer (e.g., requester) makes an exception that specifically says otherwise.
  • In the context of L, the letters C and V mean the following:
    • C: An ASCII letter that is a consonant (e.g., N and P) and allowed within a domain name. Exceptions may be made by the writer (e.g., requester) in rare circumstances.
    • V: An ASCII letter that is a vowel (i.e., A, E, I, O, and U; optionally includes Y) and allowed within a domain name. Exceptions may be made by the writer (e.g., requester) in rare circumstances.
• N: An ASCII number (e.g., 0 to 9) that is allowed within a domain name. All other numbers in other languages do not qualify unless an exception is made by the writer (e.g., requester).
• S or I: Special characters that result in an Internationalized domain name (IDN) do not qualify for any of the representations above unless an exception is made by the writer (e.g., requester). There is not an established way to represent these special characters, but the letters S (for special) or I (for international) would make sense and be understandable.

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