Where does the magic column "name" come from? I got this by accident:

db=&gt; select name from site;
ERROR:  column "name" does not exist
LINE 1: select name from site;
               ^
db=&gt; select site.name from site;
     name
---------------
 (1,mysitename)
(1 row)


The second query return a tuple containing a whole row. Using postgres 9.0.1. 

Edit: the definition of site by request. I doesn't really matter, this quirk works for any table.

db=&gt; \d site
                         Table "public.site"
 Column |  Type   |                     Modifiers
--------+---------+---------------------------------------------------
 id     | integer | not null default nextval('site_id_seq'::regclass)
 title  | text    | not null
NAME is actually a function. It's a quirk of Postgres that a function with one argument e.g. function(arg) can also be called as arg.function. From the docs:


  The equivalence between functional
  notation and attribute notation makes
  it possible to use functions on
  composite types to emulate "computed
  fields".


NAME is an internal type for object names, and this function is casting its argument to that type and returning it.