diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 86b1b44..83e9048 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ CHANGES IN Mini-XML 2.10
 
 	- The version number in mxml.h was wrong (Bug #532)
 	- The mxml.spec file was out of date (Bug #521)
+	- Mini-XML no longer allows malformed element names (Bug #509)
 	- mxmlLoad* and mxmlSAXLoad* did not properly create text nodes when
 	  MXML_TEXT_CALLBACK was specified (Bug #531)
 	- mxmlDelete used a recursive algorithm which could require large
diff --git a/mxml-file.c b/mxml-file.c
index e083ddd..5ad842d 100644
--- a/mxml-file.c
+++ b/mxml-file.c
@@ -1577,6 +1577,8 @@ mxml_load_data(
 	  if (mxml_add_char(ch, &bufptr, &buffer, &bufsize))
 	    goto error;
 	}
+	else if (ch < '0' && ch != '!' && ch != '-' && ch != '.' && ch != '/')
+	  goto error;
 	else if (mxml_add_char(ch, &bufptr, &buffer, &bufsize))
 	  goto error;
 	else if (((bufptr - buffer) == 1 && buffer[0] == '?') ||