John:
I believe X.509 v3 has already addressed your concern. The v3 certificate has
provision for one or more names of non-X.500 type for both the subject and the
issuer. Name forms explicitly supported include rfc822 name, DNS name, X.400
address, and EDI party name. There is also provision for defining and
registering other name forms.
There is now no need for end users to consider themselves as being identified
by
X.500 names at all. X.509 is still oriented towards X.500 naming for the CA
infrastructure, but I don't believe that is your concern.
Warwick