The “name” attribute is never allowed on the “th” element.

The name attribute is not a valid attribute for the <th> element in HTML.

No HTML specification has defined name on header cells, so it has no effect on how the table renders or how assistive technology reads it. The validator reports it twice: this warning, and an error saying that the attribute is not allowed on th at this point. Both go away once the attribute is removed.

What to use instead depends on what the name was meant to do. To identify a header cell, give it an id. An id works as a link target (page.html#year), and data cells can point to it through their headers attribute. To mark a header as labeling its column or row, add scope="col" or scope="row". To keep a value that only scripts read, move it to a data-* attribute such as data-name.

Scripts that look these cells up with document.getElementsByName() still find them while the attribute is there, so update them to getElementById() or a [data-name] selector when you change the markup.

Invalid example

<table>
  <tr>
    <th name="year">Year</th>
    <th name="revenue">Revenue</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>2024</td>
    <td>1,200</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Valid example

Using id and scope on the header cells, with headers on the data cells:

<table>
  <tr>
    <th id="year" scope="col">Year</th>
    <th id="revenue" scope="col">Revenue</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td headers="year">2024</td>
    <td headers="revenue">1,200</td>
  </tr>
</table>

If the value is only metadata for scripts, a data-* attribute works:

<table>
  <tr>
    <th data-name="year">Year</th>
    <th data-name="revenue">Revenue</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>2024</td>
    <td>1,200</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Learn more:

MDN Reference

HTML th element - MDN

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WHATWG Spec

HTML tables - WHATWG

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