Third-Level .name Domains Are Staying: What Verisign’s Reversal Means for Your firstname.lastname.name Email

Existing third-level .name addresses are staying. On 5 November 2026 Verisign, the registry that runs .name, told ICANN it “will continue to support all EPP transactions related to existing registrations” for third-level names such as john.smith.name and for registry email addresses such as john@smith.name “for as long as at least one ICANN-accredited registrar also continues to offer these services at the retail level.” What still ends is new registrations of both services. The reported deletion date of 15 February 2027 no longer applies to existing names, but keeping yours now depends on your registrar still renewing it. If you want an address no one can take away, move your email to a domain you control, for example your own second-level .name domain such as johnsmith.name.

Updated on 11 November 2026 with Verisign’s letter to ICANN of 5 November 2026. Checked against that letter, ICANN’s two approval letters to Verisign, Verisign’s original requests, and ICANN’s reconsideration records. Every fact below carries its source.

What changed on 5 November 2026

	Plan approved in 2026	Verisign’s letter of 5 November 2026
Existing third-level names (john.smith.name)	Deleted at the end of the notice period	Kept, with renewals and other changes supported, while at least one ICANN-accredited registrar sells the service
Existing registry email addresses (john@smith.name)	Deleted; forwarding stops	Kept on the same condition
New registrations of either service	End	Still end: the new requests “will continue to seek authorization to discontinue” them
Verisign’s requests to ICANN	RSEP 2026013 and 2026014, approved	To be withdrawn and replaced by “new, updated RSEP requests”

Source: letter from Patrick Kane (Verisign) to Amanda Fessenden (ICANN), 5 November 2026. The letter also says that on 15 August 2026 Verisign had given registrars “a 180-day notice” of the shutdown, which is where the February 2027 date reported by registrants came from. Verisign says it believes several registrars plan to keep offering the services and that it will work with them so that at least one does.

The catch is the condition. Your name survives at the registry, but you can only renew it through a registrar that still offers the service, and some have already dropped it (see below). The updated requests had not been published by ICANN when we checked on 11 November 2026.

The two services involved

Most coverage talks about deleted domains, but on 15 April 2026 Verisign filed two separate requests under ICANN’s Registry Services Evaluation Policy (RSEP). Both services date back to the original 2001 .name contract between ICANN and Global Name Registry, the first operator of the extension.

	Third-level names	Registry email addresses
Looks like	john.smith.name	john@smith.name
Verisign request	RSEP 2026013	RSEP 2026014
What ends	New registrations. Existing names stay while a registrar offers them (5 Nov 2026)	New addresses. Existing addresses and forwarding stay on the same condition
How many	About 22,000 registrations, “the majority” not in use (Verisign’s figure)	Not published
Who controls smith.name	Verisign, as a shared name	Verisign, as a shared name
What the original plan said about smith.name	Not stated in the request	Blocked from re-registration for one year after a shutdown

Sources: Verisign’s original RSEP requests of 15 April 2026 (published by ICANN as attachments to Reconsideration Request 26-2) and ICANN’s letters of 28 July 2026 approving the third-level shutdown and the email shutdown.

Verisign originally gave ICANN two reasons: “declining usage and limited registrar support,” and that ending the services “will increase efficiency for the operation of the .name TLD.” It also told ICANN it had consulted the registrars that manage most of the affected users and that none raised security, stability or competition concerns. Ordinary second-level .name domains, such as johnsmith.name, are not affected.

Timeline

Date	Event	Status	Source
15 Apr 2026	Verisign files RSEP 2026013 (third level) and 2026014 (email)	Confirmed	Verisign’s requests
7 May 2026	ICANN approves both; posted on 8 May	Confirmed	ICANN letters, 28 Jul 2026
2 Jun 2026	First appeal (Reconsideration Request 26-2)	Confirmed	ICANN reconsideration page
28 Jul 2026	ICANN tells Verisign it is “free to discontinue” both services	Confirmed	ICANN letters
24 Aug 2026	ICANN Board committee (BAMC) recommends denying request 26-2	Confirmed	BAMC recommendation
14 Oct 2026	Six appeals consolidated for a joint decision	Confirmed	ICANN notice of consolidation
28 Oct 2026	Nine appeals now consolidated (26-2, 26-5, 26-6, 26-7, 26-9 to 26-13); no decision yet	Confirmed	ICANN notice of consolidation (Request 26-13)
15 Aug 2026	Verisign gives registrars a 180-day notice of the shutdown	Confirmed	Verisign letter, 5 Nov 2026
5 Nov 2026	Verisign keeps existing registrations of both services while at least one registrar offers them; will withdraw and refile its requests for new registrations only	Confirmed	Verisign letter to ICANN
15 Feb 2027	Reported deletion date of existing names and addresses	No longer applies to existing registrations	Registrants’ filings (Request 26-13), CircleID 23 Oct 2026; superseded by the 5 Nov letter
Not yet known	ICANN decision on the updated requests and on the nine appeals	Pending	ICANN reconsideration pages, checked 11 Nov 2026

ICANN’s letters add a detail that matters if you have heard nothing yet: “With regard to communications with registrants, registrars manage the registrar-registrant relationship(s).” Verisign notifies registrars; whether and when you are told depends on the company you pay. One registrant told ICANN they learned of the February 2027 date from automated warnings their registrar sent between August and October 2026. If you received such a warning, ask your registrar whether it now follows Verisign’s 5 November decision.

Is your address one of these? How to check

1. Your address has two dots before “name” (john.smith.name, or a website at that address): it is a third-level name. It stays, but only through a registrar that still offers the service.
2. Your email is john@smith.name and you never registered smith.name yourself: it is a registry email address. Its forwarding continues on the same condition.
3. You registered johnsmith.name directly and use it for email or a website: you hold a second-level domain. It was never part of the shutdown.

If you are unsure which case is yours, look at the mail servers (MX records) of the part after the @ sign. Any DNS lookup tool shows them. We checked two common surnames on 24 October 2026: smith.name and lee.name both point their mail to mx01 to mx04.nic.name, the mail servers the registry runs for this service, have no nameservers of their own, and return no registrant in Verisign’s registration data service (RDAP). That is what a shared surname managed by the registry looks like. If your address depends on a name like that, it depends on a legacy service that Verisign now keeps only for existing users.

Third level, registry email or your own .name: the difference

	Third-level name	Registry email address	Your own second-level .name
Example	john.smith.name	john@smith.name	johnsmith.name, and any address @johnsmith.name
Who controls the part after the dot or @	Verisign (smith.name is shared)	Verisign (smith.name is shared)	You
Status since 5 Nov 2026	Kept while a registrar offers it; no new ones	Kept while a registrar offers it; no new ones	Unchanged
Email	Through the registry’s forwarding, if it was bundled	Forwarding by the registry only	Any provider you choose: forwarding, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365
Can you move it to another registrar?	Limited: some registrars have dropped it	Not a domain of its own	Yes, like any domain
Can someone else get it later?	Not stated	Only if the service ended: the original plan blocked smith.name for one year, then did not say	Only if you let it expire

The shared surname: why the risk has not fully gone

The technical part of Verisign’s email request explains how the service works. When someone takes an address such as firstname@lastname.name, Verisign adds an MX record to lastname.name that sends the mail to a server Verisign operates. Under the original plan, at the shutdown “SLD E-mail Addresses will be deleted and the MX records associated with the second-level domain name … will be removed,” and Verisign “will prevent re-registration of the second-level domain names managed by Verisign and associated with the deleted SLD E-mail Addresses for one year from the effective date of discontinuation.”

The request does not say what happens after that year, and the third-level request says nothing about the shared names above third-level domains. That gap is the core of the latest appeal. Request 26-13, filed by a registrant on 21 October 2026, argues that once a shared name such as smith.name can be registered by anyone, the new owner could set up mail for it and receive password-reset emails still addressed to the old accounts. That is the requester’s argument, not a finding by ICANN.

Verisign’s 5 November decision removes the immediate deletion, but not the underlying question. Existing addresses survive only while at least one registrar sells the service; if the last one stops, the original shutdown rules (and the shared-name question) come back. Until the updated requests are published, the safe practice is unchanged: keep a second address on a domain you own as the recovery email of your important accounts.

The appeals

Verisign’s letter gives most appellants what they asked for, but the appeals are still formally open. ICANN’s reconsideration page lists nine requests about the .name decisions, filed between June and October 2026 (26-2, 26-5, 26-6, 26-7 and 26-9 to 26-13). On 14 October ICANN consolidated six of them and said they “will all be jointly considered in due course, first by the Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee (BAMC) and then the Board,” and that later requests on the same action would join them. On 28 October it extended the consolidation to all nine. As of 11 November 2026 the request pages list registrant correspondence up to 7 November and no Board decision. Verisign’s letter does not mention the appeals.

Before the letter, the only formal assessment pointed the other way. On 24 August 2026 the BAMC recommended denying request 26-2, concluding that “the approvals of RSEP 2026013 and RSEP 2026014 were appropriate and do not warrant reconsideration.” ICANN’s Ombuds reached the same view.

Registrants had asked for anything from keeping existing registrations (“grandfathering”), which is close to what Verisign has now offered, to permanently blocking the shared surnames so nobody can claim them. One filing from 29 September says a large registrar platform, OpenSRS (Tucows), stopped renewing third-level .name names and registry email forwarding on 19 June 2026, and that it did not know which registrars still accepted them. If your renewal has already been refused, ask the registrar whether it will resume after Verisign’s 5 November decision, or which registrar can renew the name. Verisign says it believes “several registrars” plan to continue.

What to do now

First, the short version: ask your registrar in writing whether it will keep renewing your third-level name or registry email address. If the answer is yes, you can keep it; set it to auto-renew. If the answer is no, or you would rather not depend on one legacy service, move to a domain you own with the checklist below.

1. Register a second-level domain of your own. The closest match is your name as a .name domain (johnsmith.name, john-smith.name). Anyone, anywhere, can register one, and it is usually live within minutes. A .com or a country domain works the same way; you can check several extensions at once.
2. Set up email on it before you change anything else. The simplest option is forwarding to the inbox you already read. With Register.Domains, every domain includes free email forwarding, up to five addresses, as long as it uses our nameservers. For a full mailbox, see how to get an email address with your own domain.
3. Make a list of where the old address is used. Search your inbox for messages sent to it: banks, tax and government portals, your mobile carrier, domain and hosting accounts, app stores, and the recovery address of your main email account.
4. Change the account email, not just the forwarding. Start with accounts that can reset other accounts (your main email provider, password manager, Apple, Google and Microsoft accounts), then money and identity, then everything else.
5. Remove the old address as a recovery option wherever it is listed as a backup email. This is the step that protects you if the shared name ever gets a new owner.
6. Tell your contacts and update public places: email signature, CV, professional profiles, business cards, PGP keys.
7. Ask your current registrar three questions in writing: whether it will keep offering the service after Verisign’s 5 November decision, until when it can renew your name, and, if it is dropping the service, whether it will refund unused years. None of the ICANN or Verisign documents covers refunds.
8. Keep the old address working as long as it lasts and watch which senders still use it. Each one is an account you missed.

If you want a professional-looking address on the new domain, these professional email address ideas show the formats that work best.

Quick answers

Will my firstname.lastname.name address be deleted in February 2027?

Not under Verisign’s 5 November 2026 decision. The registry will keep existing third-level names and registry email addresses for as long as at least one ICANN-accredited registrar offers them. In practice it depends on renewals: a registrant’s filing says names whose renewal was refused have already dropped out of the .name zone after they expired.

Can I keep the same address?

Yes, if your registrar (or another registrar) still renews it. You cannot register a new one: new third-level names and registry email addresses are still being discontinued. If you want an address that does not depend on that, use a second-level domain made of your name, such as johnsmith.name, which you hold directly.

Is .name itself going away?

No. The changes cover only the two legacy services. Second-level .name registrations continue, and Verisign says it is working with ICANN to renew the .name Registry Agreement under the 2024 Base Registry Agreement used by other extensions.

Will I get a refund for years already paid?

Less likely to matter now that existing names stay, but the ICANN and Verisign documents do not say. Refunds depend on your registrar, which is why it is worth asking in writing now.

A name on a domain you own

Verisign’s reversal keeps existing addresses alive, but a third-level name or a registry email address is still borrowed from a shared name controlled by someone else, and it lasts only while a registrar sells it. A second-level domain is yours for as long as you renew it, and you decide where its email goes. Register your .name domain, add free email forwarding, and use it as the backup address of the accounts that matter.