Should dhclient put an entry in /etc/hosts?

[Steve Bergman]

My cable ISP is having problems today and DNS requests are quick slow. 
I notice that it is taking longer than usual to log in and a ridiculous
amount of time to bring up a gnome-terminal window.  A little
investigation shows that it is indeed the DNS lookup on my own host name
that is slowing things down so much.  It seems like something as local
as a terminal window should not be dependent on an external DNS
request.  Shouldn't dhclient add the assigned hostname and IP to
/etc/hosts automatically?

-Steve