looking for terminology recommendations concerning non-rooted FQDNs

Sat Feb 23 03:49:57 UTC 2013

A domain name without a terminal dot is a relative domain name.  
-- An application requesting name to address translation gets to decide if a search list is to be used, including the default of dot.

A domain name with a terminal dot is a Fully Qualified Domain Name. 
-- An application requesting name to address translation must submit the name as received to the lookup process.

These definitions have been effective of decades and do not need additional terminology.  
-- Faulty implementations are not an excuse for ever more complex terminology.

As a side note, a hostname is usually a domain name. A domain name is never necessarily a hostname.  For example, the hostname command on my mini returns "minijim", while the domain name used to reach my mini locally is "minijim.local", but that is not my mini's hostname.  But my mini's name to address lookup mechanism uses protocols other than DNS to figure that out. But, new terminology for hostnames or domain names was never required.

James R. Cutler
james.cutler at consultant.com