domain name

n. (Computers) series of words or abbreviations or phrases which identifies a specific computer connected to the Internet and serves as its address, alphabetic form for Internet address

The term domain name has multiple related meanings:A name that identifies a computer or computers on the internet. These names appear as a component of a Web site's URL, e.g. wikipedia.org. This type of domain name is also called a hostname.The product that domain name registrars provide to their customers. These names are often called registered domain names.Names used for other purposes in the Domain Name System (DNS), for example the special name which follows the @ sign in an email address, or the Top-level domain names like .com, or the names used by the Session Initiation Protocol (VoIP), or DomainKeys.They are sometimes colloquially (and incorrectly) referred to by marketers as "web addresses".
See more at Wikipedia.org...

Noun
1. strings of letters used to name organizations and computers and addresses on the internet; "domain names are organized hierarchically with the more generic parts to the right"
(hypernym) name
(classification) computer science, computing

fully qualified domain name

<networking> (DNS) A general-purpose distributed, replicated, data query service chiefly used on Internet for translating hostnames into Internet addresses. Also, the style of hostname used on the Internet, though such a name is properly called a fully qualified domain name. DNS can be configured to use a sequence of name servers, based on the domains in the name being looked for, until a match is found.
The name resolution client (e.g. Unix's gethostbyname() library function) can be configured to search for host information in the following order: first in the local /etc/hosts file, second in NIS and third in DNS. This sequencing of Naming Services is sometimes called "name service switching". Under Solaris is configured in the file /etc/nsswitch.conf.
DNS can be queried interactively using the command nslookup. It is defined in STD 13, RFC 1034, RFC 1035, RFC 1591.
BIND is a common DNS server.
Info from Virtual Office, Inc..
(2001-05-14)