Honestly, the "proper" way should be passing something like this def namedtuple_factory(cursor, row): fields = [column[0] for column in cursor.desc

Honestly, the "proper" way should be passing something like this def namedtuple_factory(cursor, row): fields = [column[0] for column in cursor.description] cls = namedtuple("Row", fields) return cls._make(row) to the fetchall(), to automatically keep the names in sync with those in the SQL query string.