Sex.eu was reportedly the most popular request to the European Registry of Internet Domain Names (EURid), the European registrar handling the new top-level domain.
Although specific numbers were not released, EURid officials said they received more than 100,000 applications during the first three hours after .eu became available, with 45,000 of them flooding in during the first 20 minutes alone.
Sex.eu was followed by Hotel.eu in popularity. Travel.eu, Jobs.eu, Hotels.eu., Casino.eu, Poker.eu, Golf.eu, Business.eu and Music.eu rounded out the Top 10. Porn.eu was in 11th place.
German organizations lodged the highest number of requests for registration with nearly 35,000 applications, followed by France and the Netherlands. U.K-based organizations submitted more than 10,000 applications.
“It's all working very well,” spokesman Martin Selmayr said.
But don’t look for a commercial Sex.eu site to pop up too soon. For the first two months of .eu's existence, only registrations for trademarks, public bodies and geographical locations will be accepted. After that, companies, trade names and business identifiers will be officially entered into the registrar’s books.
EURid instituted the waiting period for open registration in an attempt to prevent cybersquatting.
The domain is open to individuals across all of the 25 European Union member states.
Currently, 779 registration officers around the world, including in the U.S. and Japan, have been given authority by EURid to receive requests for the .eu domain names.
