You cannot name a PRIMARY KEY. The name PRIMARY KEY is the designation of the arbitrary, or preferred, unique index ([**candidate key**][1]) for accessing the table. A table can have multiple unique keys, but only one PRIMARY KEY. EXAMPLE: Employee table with three unique keys - EmployeeID - Driver's License Number - Social Security Number You can pick a name out of a hat, flip a coin, or ask project managers which one of the three indexes should be the PRIMARY KEY. You can create a unique index without it being the PRIMARY KEY as follows: create table a (foo INTEGER, UNIQUE KEY foo_id (foo)); Check these other links about PRIMARY KEYs vs Unique Keys - https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/1355/why-do-primary-keys-have-names-of-their-own - https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/9265/what-is-the-point-of-a-primary-key As for the other question: the Index Type When it comes to the Index Type, here are the defaults: - The [*MEMORY storage engine*][2] and [*NDB (MySQL Cluster)*][3] use HASH as the index_type. - You could specify BTREE as the index type - It tends to bloat more than HASH indexes - The index_type for MyISAM and InnoDB is BTREE. - [*MyISAM and InnoDB DO NOT SUPPORT HASH INDEXES*][4] - [*You have to emulate HASH indexing*][5] To find out the index type, run this query: select index_name,index_type from information_schema.statistics where table_schema='test' and table_name='a'; Here is an example: mysql> use test Database changed mysql> create table a (foo INTEGER, PRIMARY KEY foo_id (foo)); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.07 sec) mysql> show create table a\G *************************** 1. row *************************** Table: a Create Table: CREATE TABLE `a` ( `foo` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0', PRIMARY KEY (`foo`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> select index_name,index_type from information_schema.statistics -> where table_schema='test' and table_name='a'; +------------+------------+ | index_name | index_type | +------------+------------+ | PRIMARY | BTREE | +------------+------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidate_key [2]: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/memory-storage-engine.html [3]: http://www.mysql.com/products/cluster/mysql-cluster-datasheet.pdf [4]: https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/2817/why-does-mysql-not-have-hash-indices-on-myisam-or-innodb [5]: https://dba.stackexchange.com/a/2818/877