Does numpy's record array do what you want? http://www.scipy.org/RecordArrays http://www.scipy.org/RecordArrays It doesn't quite have first-class status in th

Does numpy's record array do what you want? http://www.scipy.org/RecordArrays http://www.scipy.org/RecordArrays It doesn't quite have first-class status in the library the way data.frame does in R, but it does let you index an array using strings.