Short Domain Names

At the time of writing, the following 6575 .de domains with 3 characters are available for registration:
domains_3char-de-available_2017-10-21.txt (6575)

When comparing this to the same list from 3 months earlier of all length 3 .de domains (6693) we find that there were changes in both directions: 220 domains were taken and also 102 domains became available again. For me personally it comes as a surprise that so many were abandoned.

There are no more available .com domains with 1, 2, or 3 characters. Here is a list of available 4 character .com domains (zip). Completing this list by repeatedly querying takes more than a week, because you have to query for 1.7 mln domain names and you may not exceed the maximum allowed query rate.

IDNs

Short domain names are used because of their simplicity. Therefor I didn't include domains with special characters like German umlauts ä/ö/ü or ß in these lists, because domains containing special characters have technical subtleties which can make them complicated. Thus they would render the advantage of a short domain name useless, which is contrary to the intention of simplicity.