WHOIS is a public, queryable record of who registered a given domain name, when, and through which registrar: a lookup system that's existed since the early internet as a way to identify the party responsible for a domain. A WHOIS record typically includes the registrant's contact information (unless privacy protection is applied; see What Is Domain Privacy?), the registrar of record, key dates (registration and expiration), and the domain's current nameservers.

WHOIS exists partly for accountability, so a domain's owner can be identified for legal, technical, or abuse-related reasons, and partly as basic infrastructure. NameBright's own WHOIS lookup tool is at namebright.com/whois.