Three Middle Eastern countries have become the first to obtain internet addresses entirely in non-Latin characters.

The arabic lettered domain names for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were added to the internet's master directories this week. It's the first major change to the internet domain name system since its creation in the 1980s.

Registrations for websites to use those names are to begin soon. Egypt granted three companies approval to register names using the country's new Arabic suffix. Websites had to end their addresses with ".com" or another string using Latin characters. This means that Arab businesses and government agencies still had to use Latin characters on billboards and advertisements, even if they were targeting populations with no familiarity with English.

Non-Latin characters were sometimes permitted for the portions of the internet address before the suffix. But Arabic websites generally haven't had that option because Arabic characters are written right to left, conflicting with Latin suffixes written left to right. Egyptian Communication and Information Technology Minister Tarek Kamel said in a statement that all this would open up new horizons for e-services in Egypt.