How to Fix Spring Data JPA Query Errors with SQL Reserved Keywords Like GROUP, ORDER, or KEY

Mar 26, 2026

Problem

When I wrote a JPQL query using a column named group, I got this error:

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:
    Validation failed for query for method
    public abstract java.util.List com.example.repository.UserRepository.findByGroup(java.lang.String)

Caused by: org.hibernate.hql.internal.ast.QuerySyntaxException:
    unexpected token: group near line 1, column 32 [SELECT u FROM User u WHERE u.group = :groupName]

My application wouldn’t start because Spring Data JPA couldn’t validate the query.

Environment

Spring Boot 3.2.x
Spring Data JPA 3.2.x
H2 database (development) / MySQL (production)
Hibernate as JPA provider

What happened?

I had an entity with a column named group:

@Entity
@Table(name = "users")
public class User {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;

    @Column(name = "group")  // This causes the problem!
    private String group;

    // getters and setters
}

And a repository with a query:

@Repository
public interface UserRepository extends JpaRepository<User, Long> {

    @Query("SELECT u FROM User u WHERE u.group = :groupName")
    List<User> findByGroup(@Param("groupName") String groupName);
}

The error occurred because GROUP is a SQL reserved keyword (used in GROUP BY clauses). The JPQL parser interpreted u.group as the start of a GROUP BY clause, not as a column reference.

How to solve it?

I tried renaming the field first, but that wasn’t an option—the database schema already existed and couldn’t be changed.

The solution was to escape the column name with backticks in the @Column annotation:

@Entity
@Table(name = "users")
public class User {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;

    @Column(name = "`group`")  // Escaped with backticks!
    private String group;

    // getters and setters
}

Now the JPQL query validates successfully:

@Repository
public interface UserRepository extends JpaRepository<User, Long> {

    @Query("SELECT u FROM User u WHERE u.group = :groupName")
    List<User> findByGroup(@Param("groupName") String groupName);
}

I verified the fix with a test:

@DataJpaTest
@ActiveProfiles("h2")
class UserRepositoryIntegrationTest {

    @Autowired
    private UserRepository userRepository;

    @Test
    void givenUser_whenFindByGroup_thenReturnsUser() {
        User user = new User();
        user.setGroup("Admin");
        userRepository.save(user);

        List<User> result = userRepository.findByGroup("Admin");

        assertEquals(1, result.size());
        assertEquals("Admin", result.get(0).getGroup());
    }
}

The test passed, confirming the escaped column name works.

The reason

SQL reserved keywords have special meaning in the SQL language. When you use them as identifiers (table names, column names), the parser gets confused.

Common reserved keywords that often cause problems:

Keyword	SQL Usage	Common as Column Name?
GROUP	GROUP BY	Yes (user groups)
ORDER	ORDER BY	Yes (order of items)
KEY	PRIMARY KEY, FOREIGN KEY	Yes (API keys, identifiers)
INDEX	CREATE INDEX	Yes (array indices)
VALUE	VALUES clause	Yes (configuration values)
STATUS	Database-specific	Yes (status fields)

The backtick (`) is the escape character for MySQL and H2. For PostgreSQL, use double quotes:

@Column(name = "\"group\"")  // PostgreSQL

Summary

In this post, I showed how to fix JPQL validation errors when using SQL reserved keywords as column names. The key point is to escape the column name with backticks (or double quotes for PostgreSQL) in the @Column annotation.

When you see “unexpected token” errors in JPQL, check if your column names conflict with SQL reserved keywords. Use @DataJpaTest to verify your queries validate correctly.

Final Words + More Resources

My intention with this article was to help others share my knowledge and experience. If you want to contact me, you can contact by email: Email me

Here are also the most important links from this article along with some further resources that will help you in this scope:

👨‍💻 SQL Reserved Words Reference
👨‍💻 JPA Column Annotation Documentation

Oh, and if you found these resources useful, don’t forget to support me by starring the repo on GitHub!