Don't confuse the form NAME attribute with the NAME attributes required with form controls (or elements) such as INPUT and SELECT. The NAME attribute within form controls gets passed to the form-processing application.

Some examples are:

<INPUT type="text" name="firstName" size="20">

<SELECT name="region" size="15">

<TEXTAREA name="comments" rows="5" columns="30">

Without the NAME attribute, the data inside the form elements may not get recorded properly.