The SQLITE_ENABLE_COLUMN_METADATA symbol needs to be defined in order to collect this information when the statement is parsed. It also enables the sqlite3_column_database_name, sqlite3_column_table_name, and sqlite3_column_origin_name APIs. I presume that you did not have this symbol defined at compile time? And if you do have it defined, why not just use the intended API functions which do nothing more than return the results of calling the internal columnName function?