diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 09b19e5f..a264c907 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -17,6 +17,8 @@ Other changes:
 What's new in psycopg 2.7.5
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
+- Allow non-ascii chars in namedtuple fields (regression introduced fixing
+  :ticket':`#211`).
 - Fixed building on Solaris 11 and derivatives such as SmartOS and illumos
   (:ticket:`#677`).
 - Maybe fixed building on MSYS2 (as reported in :ticket:`#658`).
diff --git a/lib/extras.py b/lib/extras.py
index 1f85d532..9c26ccba 100644
--- a/lib/extras.py
+++ b/lib/extras.py
@@ -363,12 +363,15 @@ class NamedTupleCursor(_cursor):
             return
 
     def _make_nt(self):
+        # ascii except alnum and underscore
+        nochars = ' !"#$%&\'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\\]^`{|}~'
+        re_clean = _re.compile('[' + _re.escape(nochars) + ']')
+
         def f(s):
-            # NOTE: Python 3 actually allows unicode chars in fields
-            s = _re.sub('[^a-zA-Z0-9_]', '_', s)
+            s = re_clean.sub('_', s)
             # Python identifier cannot start with numbers, namedtuple fields
             # cannot start with underscore. So...
-            if _re.match('^[0-9_]', s):
+            if s[0] == '_' or '0' <= s[0] <= '9':
                 s = 'f' + s
 
             return s
diff --git a/tests/test_extras_dictcursor.py b/tests/test_extras_dictcursor.py
index 99bdeee6..2a46fbaf 100755
--- a/tests/test_extras_dictcursor.py
+++ b/tests/test_extras_dictcursor.py
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ from datetime import timedelta
 import psycopg2
 import psycopg2.extras
 import unittest
-from .testutils import ConnectingTestCase, skip_before_postgres
+from .testutils import ConnectingTestCase, skip_before_postgres, skip_before_python
 
 
 class ExtrasDictCursorTests(ConnectingTestCase):
@@ -357,6 +357,13 @@ class NamedTupleCursorTest(ConnectingTestCase):
         self.assertEqual(rv.f_column_, 2)
         self.assertEqual(rv.f3, 3)
 
+    @skip_before_python(3)
+    def test_nonascii_name(self):
+        curs = self.conn.cursor()
+        curs.execute('select 1 as \xe5h\xe9')
+        rv = curs.fetchone()
+        self.assertEqual(getattr(rv, '\xe5h\xe9'), 1)
+
     def test_minimal_generation(self):
         # Instrument the class to verify it gets called the minimum number of times.
         from psycopg2.extras import NamedTupleCursor