But you can use reserved words, you only have to quote them: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/legal-names.html:

An identifier may be quoted or unquoted. If an identifier is a reserved word or contains special characters, you must quote it whenever you refer to it.

(...)

The identifier quote character is the backtick ('`'):

mysql> SELECT * FROM `select` WHERE `select`.id > 100;
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If the server SQL mode includes the ANSI_QUOTES mode option, it is also allowable to quote identifiers with double quotes:

mysql> CREATE TABLE "test" (col INT);
ERROR 1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. (...)
mysql> SET sql_mode='ANSI_QUOTES';
mysql> CREATE TABLE "test" (col INT);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
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