I am trying to create a node with a label that starts with a numeric character. I was following the documentation and other stack overflow answers, but I was never able to get this to work.

https://neo4j.com/docs/cypher-manual/current/syntax/naming/#symbolic-names-escaping-rules

I have tried multiple different solution from inlining backticks with ` and wrapping different parts of the query with backticks.

const escapedName = escapeLabel(uniqueIdentifier);
const queryInsert = `
MERGE (w:example::${escapedName}) 
RETURN w
  `;

function escapeLabel(label: string): string {
  if (/^[0-9]/.test(label)) {
    return "`" + label + "`";
  }
  return label;
}

When I console log the query insert I see the backticks

{
  queryInsert: "n  MERGE (w:example::`9tV3G7nWMnduftSTQtzB4xpHK4iz1`) n  RETURN wn  ",
}

But the error message says

Neo4jError: Invalid input '::': expected ")", "WHERE", "{" or a parameter (line 2, column 17 (offset: 19))
"  MERGE (w:example::`9tV3G7nWMnduftSTQtzB4xpHK4iz1`)"

If I changed the input to a label that doesn’t start with a numeric character, it all works fine.
^