diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index c4d65011..efdb4e52 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -20,6 +20,8 @@ What's new in psycopg 2.7.4
 - Moving away from installing the wheel package by default.
   Packages installed from wheel raise a warning on import. Added package
   ``psycopg2-binary`` to install from wheel instead (:ticket:`#543`).
+- Convert fields names into valid Python identifiers in
+  `~psycopg2.extras.NamedTupleCursor` (:ticket:`#211`).
 - Fixed Solaris 10 support (:ticket:`#532`).
 - `cursor.mogrify()` can be called on closed cursors (:ticket:`#579`).
 - Fixed setting session characteristics in corner cases on autocommit
diff --git a/lib/extras.py b/lib/extras.py
index 68df344c..1f85d532 100644
--- a/lib/extras.py
+++ b/lib/extras.py
@@ -363,7 +363,17 @@ class NamedTupleCursor(_cursor):
             return
 
     def _make_nt(self):
-        return namedtuple("Record", [d[0] for d in self.description or ()])
+        def f(s):
+            # NOTE: Python 3 actually allows unicode chars in fields
+            s = _re.sub('[^a-zA-Z0-9_]', '_', s)
+            # Python identifier cannot start with numbers, namedtuple fields
+            # cannot start with underscore. So...
+            if _re.match('^[0-9_]', s):
+                s = 'f' + s
+
+            return s
+
+        return namedtuple("Record", [f(d[0]) for d in self.description or ()])
 
 
 class LoggingConnection(_connection):
diff --git a/tests/test_extras_dictcursor.py b/tests/test_extras_dictcursor.py
index 75c22773..99bdeee6 100755
--- a/tests/test_extras_dictcursor.py
+++ b/tests/test_extras_dictcursor.py
@@ -349,6 +349,14 @@ class NamedTupleCursorTest(ConnectingTestCase):
         curs.execute("update nttest set s = s")
         self.assertRaises(psycopg2.ProgrammingError, curs.fetchall)
 
+    def test_bad_col_names(self):
+        curs = self.conn.cursor()
+        curs.execute('select 1 as "foo.bar_baz", 2 as "?column?", 3 as "3"')
+        rv = curs.fetchone()
+        self.assertEqual(rv.foo_bar_baz, 1)
+        self.assertEqual(rv.f_column_, 2)
+        self.assertEqual(rv.f3, 3)
+
     def test_minimal_generation(self):
         # Instrument the class to verify it gets called the minimum number of times.
         from psycopg2.extras import NamedTupleCursor