Premium letters: Let's finally fix a myth.

[italiandragon]

For years I read some people keep repeating the same mantra, like a verse from the Bible.

They kept saying that some letters are "premium" and some not. I call it BS, especially when there are so many different languages (for examples in Italian there are only 21 letters) and each language uses letters of their alphabet with different frequency.

You can do your own reasearch on Google:

www.google.com/search?q=frequency+of+letters+words+in+a+language

But the most annoying thing comes when native English speakers keep getting wrong the stats about their own language, especially by insisting that the letter U is not "premium".

It's incorrect, it has been years that we debated this, both in English and in other languages, if you really want to call some letters "PREMIUM", then the vowel U is there:

http://www.math.cornell.edu/~mec/2003-2004/cryptography/subs/frequencies.html

http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~leon/mcs425-s08/handouts/char_freq.pdf

Some people instead keep repeating forever what some guy from the 3chars website stated once. No matter how much evidence we throw at them about the letter U, they just repeat the same incorrect data.

Some people may argue with the following:

"the frequency of first letters of a word in the English language"

I won't add the source because Wikipedia is not a reliable source of data, please feel free to find and add better data, possibly from academic sources, thank you.

However, I can already note that "the first letter of an English word" stats do not consider that you are not selling dictionary words but often 4 letters which each stands for one word so we should gather data about how often the letters are used in 4L acronyms, like United Petroleom Texas Inc (name made up, not sure if it exists) or USPS.com

 

[Argentum]

You own LLL.com with U?

But generally I agreee with you, there is no anymore definion "premium letters" and sales like QNB.com ($1mln) proof that.

 

[Vinod R]

Thank you for the graphs.

 

[italiandragon]

Same applies to Mandarin or other languages.

For example, QIKU.com sold for $80,000 to a Chinese buyer 北京奇虎科技有限公司 (Beijing Qihoo Technology Co., Ltd)..

 

[yogiDomain]

Thanks for the info.
V is the most undesirable letter both for english and chinese unless it is VR or UV

 

[accent]

V lovers must unite to remove that smear!
/jk

Dragon - the Chinese have proven your point far better than any Namepros thread could ..... It would be better to say "premium combinations". It is laziness really, but perhaps its better to let it go - I have a lot of W's and K's I bought cheap.

 

[Kate]

I will trade you XQH.com in exchange for ABC.com. Deal ?

 

[Jen-Sin]

When we talk about pronounceability and brandabilty of short domains, combinations like CVC, CVCV and VCVC etc are worth the most as they can usually form a word in some language or even a made-up word, and the Vowels can be Us, and in some cases Ys. e.g. GUCI, JUMY would worth more than floor value of quad-premium LLLL names, despite having non-premium letters.

For other combinations, the probability of the permutations forming words and brands are lowered tremendously, and more likely than not, their uses are limited to mainly acronyms. This is where the frequency of first letters of a word holds a much higher importance than the frequency of letters in a language, and the fact that U is not a very popular first letters of English words makes it less premium.

Just open any English dictionary and see for yourself how many pages are used for words starting with U. We don't need any academic research to do this.

Thus, using the frequency of first letters of a word to determine how premium a letter is for a 2-5 letter domain makes good sense, backed by data and facts, and not a myth.

 

[italiandragon]

When we talk about pronounceability and brandabilty of short domains, combinations like CVC, CVCV and VCVC etc are worth the most as they can usually form a word in some language or even a made-up word, and the Vowels can be Us, and in some cases Ys. e.g. GUCI, JUMY would worth more than floor value of quad-premium LLLL names, despite having non-premium letters.

For other combinations, the probability of the permutations forming words and brands are lowered tremendously, and more likely than not, their uses are limited to mainly acronyms. This is where the frequency of first letters of a word holds a much higher importance than the frequency of letters in a language, and the fact that U is not a very popular first letters of English words makes it less premium.

Just open any English dictionary and see for yourself how many pages are used for words starting with U. We don't need any academic research to do this.

Thus, using the frequency of first letters of a word to determine how premium a letter is for a 2-5 letter domain makes good sense, backed by data and facts, and not a myth.

I got your point and it's a fair point , however I still insist that for acronyms, we should gather data about how often the letters are used in 4L acronyms, like United Petroleom Texas Inc (name made up, not sure if it exists) or USPS.com

 

[Jen-Sin]

I got your point and it's a fair point , however I still insist that for acronyms, we should gather data about how often the letters are used in 4L acronyms, like United Petroleom Texas Inc (name made up, not sure if it exists) or USPS.com

While we wait for someone to gather such data (which is dynamic and subject to changes over time) or conduct such comprehensive research which has so many variables and publish the results, the best we have now is to refer to the frequency of first letters of a words in a language to determine how premium a letter might be for short domains.

I even suggest that As and Es are not as worthless as acronyms for Chinese Pinyins, but unless the majority of domainers agree with this motion, these 2 letters will remain as anti-premium in the Chinese context.

 

[Jen-Sin]

Same applies to Mandarin or other languages.

For example, QIKU.com sold for $80,000 to a Chinese buyer 北京奇虎科技有限公司 (Beijing Qihoo Technology Co., Ltd)..

QiKu.com is branded as 奇酷. The PinYin for 奇酷 is Qí Kù. The company listed in their contact us page is 奇酷互联网科技（深圳）有限公司 which is QiKU Network Technologies (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.

What makes this domain more valuable is because it is a CVCV domain that happens to be a valid Chinese PinYin name. It's not an exception just because it contains non-premium letters like Q, K and U.

Finally, we should not use end-user sales to justify how premium a letter is. The higher the frequency occurs in the first letter of a word in a language indicates a higher possibility of end-users there might be, thus it's used as one of the yardsticks in wholesale floor pricing, and not end-user pricing.

 

[djum]

I even suggest that As and Es are not as worthless as acronyms for Chinese Pinyins, but unless the majority of domainers agree with this motion, these 2 letters will remain as anti-premium in the Chinese context.

Can't agree more.
Otherwise why would Chinese register all LLLL.net starting with A + CCC and majority of those that have A in second and 4th position.

 

[djum]

I wanted to make different argument withing the argument. If you watched Inception, you know what I'm talking about. People concentrate on Premium vs non-Premium too much, but the truth is some letters withing each category has different value. To apply math here I would use coefficients. It's surprising that no one did it before. Instead of using 10 years old classification and 2 categories, just rank domains using numbers.

If T frequency is 921 it's not the same quality as D 479, but almost twice as good.

 

[italiandragon]

While we wait for someone to gather such data (which is dynamic and subject to changes over time) or conduct such comprehensive research which has so many variables and publish the results, the best we have now is to refer to the frequency of first letters of a words in a language to determine how premium a letter might be for short domains.

I am searching.

This is not academic though: http://phrontistery.info/ihlstats.html

It puts J below U.

 

[Jen-Sin]

I wanted to make different argument withing the argument. If you watched Inception, you know what I'm talking about. People concentrate on Premium vs non-Premium too much, but the truth is some letters withing each category has different value. To apply math here I would use coefficients. It's surprising that no one did it before. Instead of using 10 years old classification and 2 categories, just rank domains using numbers.

If T frequency is 921 it's not the same quality as D 479, but almost twice as good.

From what I have been reading, there are 3 categories.

• Premium
• Semi-Premium i.e. J, K, U, V, W & Y
• Non-Premium i.e. Q, X & Z

I like your idea of using coefficients. That's how I used to determine Chinese characters before I chanced across the articles on Chinese Premium letters. As I can't find any online articles on how many Chinese characters are there starting in each letter in PinYin, thus I picked up a Chinese Pinyin dictionary and count the number of pages. lol

On the other hand, simplicity is good to quickly hang a floor value to domains that have 456,976 permutations. So if one is to invest based on selling to end-users, your way is good. However, if one is to flip to other investors, it's too complicated.

 

[italiandragon]

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/words/which-letters-are-used-most

 

[italiandragon]

this is interesting too:

https://www3.nd.edu/~busiforc/handouts/cryptography/cryptography hints.html

It comes from a University and says:

Order Of Frequency Of Initial Letters

T O A W B C D S F M R H I Y E G L N P U J K

 

[djum]

W really?

They need to weed out verbs, because a lot of "what" "where" "when" starts with letter W.
Other than that first 10 letters almost match what they call superpremium letters just swoop B and F for L and P.

 

[pablohc86]

Just my thought, in the English dictionary there are less word starting with U than other West premium letters and this is a fact but inside acronyms i think U is great as it could mean: Union, United, University, Ultra, Universal and many more.

 

[Kate]

It just doesn't make sense to consider each letter separately. You have to consider the domain as a whole, or patterns at least. For example V may be semi-premium (whatever that means anyway) but it may not fit well in a Chinese combo. In other languages, some letters are missing from the alphabet.
For example in Icelandic there is no C Q W Z in the alphabet. But these letters are used nonetheless for names of foreign origin.
Many domain names are English-based as well. So it more subtle than that. The key is understanding the target market. If you want to sell Chinese domains, you first need to look at what people actually use there, and not just base all your investments on a dubious premium letters theory devised by domainers.

 

[elevator]

It just doesn't make sense to consider each letter separately. You have to consider the domain as a whole, or patterns at least. For example V may be semi-premium (whatever that means anyway) but it may not fit well in a Chinese combo. In other languages, some letters are missing from the alphabet.
For example in Icelandic there is no C Q W Z in the alphabet. But these letters are used nonetheless for names of foreign origin.
Many domain names are English-based as well. So it more subtle than that. The key is understanding the target market. If you want to sell Chinese domains, you first need to look at what people actually use there, and not just base all your investments on a dubious premium letters theory devised by domainers.

It just doesn't make sense to consider each letter separately. You have to consider the domain as a whole, or patterns at least. For example V may be semi-premium (whatever that means anyway) but it may not fit well in a Chinese combo. In other languages, some letters are missing from the alphabet.
For example in Icelandic there is no C Q W Z in the alphabet. But these letters are used nonetheless for names of foreign origin.
Many domain names are English-based as well. So it more subtle than that. The key is understanding the target market. If you want to sell Chinese domains, you first need to look at what people actually use there, and not just base all your investments on a dubious premium letters theory devised by domainers.

It just doesn't make sense to consider each letter separately. You have to consider the domain as a whole, or patterns at least. For example V may be semi-premium (whatever that means anyway) but it may not fit well in a Chinese combo. In other languages, some letters are missing from the alphabet.
For example in Icelandic there is no C Q W Z in the alphabet. But these letters are used nonetheless for names of foreign origin.
Many domain names are English-based as well. So it more subtle than that. The key is understanding the target market. If you want to sell Chinese domains, you first need to look at what people actually use there, and not just base all your investments on a dubious premium letters theory devised by domainers.

It just doesn't make sense to consider each letter separately. You have to consider the domain as a whole, or patterns at least. For example V may be semi-premium (whatever that means anyway) but it may not fit well in a Chinese combo. In other languages, some letters are missing from the alphabet.
For example in Icelandic there is no C Q W Z in the alphabet. But these letters are used nonetheless for names of foreign origin.
Many domain names are English-based as well. So it more subtle than that. The key is understanding the target market. If you want to sell Chinese domains, you first need to look at what people actually use there, and not just base all your investments on a dubious premium letters theory devised by domainers.

Yes!! It is a simple theory; you can not give to me what I do not like to eat, I can only buy what is of interest to me or what I know is what I can buy. If I' m buying a product for sale, I can only invest my money on what is liquid within my market and not what are not seem to be lucrative.
If you want to sell to the Chinese investors, you must consider what seem to be consumable in their market. therefore must to consider what seem premium and available in their alphabet and sylables.

Cheers.