Electronic mail systems need directories so people’s email addresses can be looked up. To build such directories, names should be broken up into standard components (e.g., first name, last name) to make searching possible. Discuss some problems that must be solved for a worldwide standard to be acceptable.

A large law firm, which has many employees, provides a single email address for each employee. Each employee’s email address is @lawfirm.com. However, the firm did not explicitly define the format of the login. Thus, some employees use their first names as their login names, some use their last names, some use their initials, etc. The firm now wishes to make a fixed format, for example:

firstname.lastname@lawfirm.com,

that can be used for the email addresses of all its employees. How can this be done without rocking the boat too much?