.lat is an Internet

generic top-level domain Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of ev ...

(gTLD) for

Latin American Latin Americans (; ) are the citizenship, citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America). Latin American countries and their Latin American diaspora, diasporas are Metroethnicity, ...

communities and users wherever they may reside. The eCOM-LAC (Federation of Latin-America and the Caribbean for the Internet and Electronic Commerce) appointed

NIC México NIC México (Network Information Centre Mexico) or NIC.MX is the non-profit organization in charge of the registry for the .mx country code top-level domain (ccTLD). NIC Mexico is also responsible for the National Internet Registry which manages ...

, manager of the .mx

ccTLD A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all tw ...

, its partner regarding a gTLD such as this. The full proposal was originally supposed to be presented to

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is a global multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization headquartered in the United States responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several dat ...

(ICANN) during 2008 but was later to be presented by mid-2011. There were initial communications that presented the idea of this new

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domain name, domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the DNS root zone, root zone of the nam ...

as a regional one but further news detailed the community orientation of the proposal Other names that were being considered are .latin and .latino. Similar proposals had already been approved like the Asian gTLD (.asia) and the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

's ccTLD (.eu). It was approved in 2015. In late 2022, the domain was acquired by XYZ LLC, based in

Santa Monica, California Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:LAT Generic top-level domains Culture of Latin America 2015 introductions