Well, yes, it’s a good question and one that I do indeed get asked from time to time. Here’s the answer…
I wanted an email address with nothing but my name in it. firstname@surname.com would have been ideal but hey all the good ones (markham.com, markham.co.uk) had been taken. I used markham.org for a while. Or, specifically, I used patrick@markham.org for an annoying company had bought lots of domains and was selling them a name at a time! Not an ideal solution.
Dot ph (.ph) is the TLD (Top Level Domain) for the Philippines. The Philippines were the first country to allow their domains to be sold to people outside of their own country. markham.ph was available so it became mine and I gradually phased out markham.org over the following five years.
I’ve become quite fond of it now but it did annoy me once when I tried to sign up for something but I got blacklisted on suspicion of being some kind of untrustworthy foriegn rogue.
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You can get further information about dot ph domains from domains.ph
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