Quite a number of people have asked about the .nu suffix on my domain name. It belongs to Niue, a 2100 person island nation, several thousand kilometers north-east of New Zealand. They sell domain names via a commercial company. Niue is in the – presumably unique – position of having had more national domain names expire in the last month than they have citizens.
Sadly, on January 7, Niue was flattened by Cyclone Heta. With the damage to the island’s infrastructure and economy, it appears that Niue may merge with New Zealand.
And so I am now pondering, what happens to domain names when the country to which they were allocated disappears?