"Sendmail & Bind Problem" is actually a DNS Client library configuration problem

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

WS> How can we get named to respond to queries on the local 
WS> subnet when the fully qualified domain name is not supplied?

Stop using that chocolate-covered banana.

<URL:http://perl.plover.com./Questions3.html>

The DNS protocol deals exclusively with fully-qualified domain names.  "named"
is irrelevant.  Domain names are translated to fully-qualified form by DNS
Client libraries before they are sent via the DNS protocol to DNS servers. 
You need to adjust how you have configured your DNS Client library to perform
that translation if you want your use of non-fully-qualified domain names by
Sendmail to do what you desire.