Until recently the "id" attribute was a completely protected keyword in Hibernate which could be used as a reference to the identity attribute of an object in HQL queries. e.g. select obj from MyObject obj where obj.id = :someId We have many objects where the ID attribute is called something other than "id", but these are still referenced in HQL queries by the "id" reference attribute. The "id" attribute is being flagged as an error in named queries (potentially plain HQL queries as well, but we don't use them) which use these references. See http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/hibernate/browse/HHH-1851 for a better description - basically, the id attribute in queries should not be flagged as an error.