The case has NOTHING to do with it. It is simply not recognized as a structural part of the query; aka it is not recognized as fulfilling the role of the JPA keyword in that context. That is the issue. Because the translator does not recognize the term as a keyword it attempts to resolve it in other means. Both JPQL and HQL are only case insensitive in regards to keywords; other aspects of the query are indeed case-sensitive. So again, this has nothing to do with case sensitivity. Please stop muddying the waters here with inaccurate assumptions and analysis. It just confuses people who come after looking at the issues.