A method and apparatus for e-mail address portability are provided. A service control point (SCP, 200) on the Internet comprises an e-mail address database (202) and a transaction processing object. The e-mail address database (202) has at least a well-known-address field (204) for storing a well-known address value and a literal address field (206) for storing a literal address value that corresponds to the well-known-address value. The transaction processing object, when called with an address translation request, accesses the e-mail address database (202). The address translation request has a well-known address value which is translated to the corresponding literal address value. After the translation, the transaction processing object returns the corresponding literal address value to the calling routine.