https://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html#the-standard-type-hierarchy

There is a table of "special attributes" of user-defined functions. The __name__ attribute name is a link, but it leads to something quite irrelevant: the description of __name__ attribute of imported modules.

In Doc/reference/datamodel.rst, there is nothing special about __name__ attribute, so it looks like some random spasm of Sphinx creating links here and there. My knowledge of rst is not sufficient to suppress it.

I think the proper way to suppress the link is :attr:`!__name__`.

However I am posting a patch which takes a different approach. I tweaked some of the entries under <https://docs.python.org/dev/library/stdtypes.html#special-attributes> that also apply to functions, etc. I invented the pseudo class name “definition” for this; better suggestions are welcome!

Then I converted the user-defined functions reference, as well as many other references, to :attr:`~definition.__name__` or similar, for these three attributes:

* definition.__name__
* definition.__qualname__
* object.__dict__

I also moved the index markup so that the index entries for the table of function attributes work.

New changeset 1ed4e4a168bb by Martin Panter in branch '2.7':
Issue #24314: Add links for general attributes like __name__, __dict__
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/1ed4e4a168bb

New changeset 4c361e189747 by Martin Panter in branch '3.5':
Issue #24314: Fix doc links for general attributes like __name__, __dict__
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/4c361e189747

New changeset 79a3aff60e37 by Martin Panter in branch 'default':
Issue #24314: Merge doc links from 3.5
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/79a3aff60e37

I also backported most of my changes to 2.7, although __name__ wasn’t originally linking to anything at all there.