Can column name be "Group" in PostgreSQL or in any databases I was designing a project which specifies that in a table what column name should be and one of the column name in the specification is &quot;group&quot;.
I tried creating it but it always throw a syntax error near the word = &quot;group&quot;. I am really curious since the keyword in SQL is &quot;group by&quot; not group, so what is the reason, I cannot rename or create a column with a name &quot;group&quot;.
Syntax and error I am using and getting:
ALTER TABLE test RENAME COLUMN sum TO group;
ERROR:  syntax error at or near &quot;group&quot;
LINE 1: ALTER TABLE test RENAME COLUMN sum TO group;
group is a reserved word (and by is another reserved word) - it's not GROUP BY that is reserved. Because it is a reserved word, it cannot be used directly as an identifier.
To use a reserved word or a name with &quot;illegal&quot; characters (such as a space) for an identifier, you need to quote the identifier.
ALTER TABLE test RENAME COLUMN sum TO &quot;group&quot;;

Note that when using quoted identifiers, you need to always quote it. And it becomes case sensitive. &quot;group&quot; is a different column name than &quot;GROUP&quot;.
For more details please see the manual.
In general it is a very bad idea to use names that require quoting. It will save you a lot of trouble if you can come up with a different name that does not require quoting.