[Zope] Zope obj naming vs python obj naming.

I came up against a situation just now whereby I had several folders in zope named with prefixes 7_1Load I believe it is illigal in python to have an object name start with an integer. So when I tried to access my folder by name in an external method I got an error. Is there another way of accessing the object in python? If not shouldn't python naming restrictions be applied to zope objects otherwise there is no guarentee that an external method will work with all objects. ps. The line I was using in the external method was "eval('self.'+id)" or something similar. I also tried getattr