Local extensions should be clearly distinguished from the Dublin Core through the use of a notational mechanism, such as using a prefix or namespace. Elements which are part of a local extension will not normally be useful to others that they have not been subject to the cross-community consensus building process that has brought the Dublin Core element set to its current state. Implementors are, however, encouraged to bring such elements to the attention of the community so that others might adopt them as judged necessary, leading possibly to eventual approval as additional Dublin Core elements. The Australian Government Locator Service is an example of a major implementation of Dublin Core metadata which has added four local elements to Dublin Core in the recommended way. The encoding of personal names is fraught with many difficulties in Dublin Core metadata, as in other types of metadata systems.
Conventions differ from culture to culture.
The recommendation for Dublin Core metadata is to encode family name first, which supports effective collation of names and is consistent with most naming conventions globally. Two Notes have been written about the difficulties of personal names among cultures. There are no limits to field length. Seems simple enough. Names of all Dublin Core mailing lists begin with dc- and can be found under D in the list of groups.