diff --git a/lang/funcs/filesystem.go b/lang/funcs/filesystem.go
index 4b899cbc4..eb4921de1 100644
--- a/lang/funcs/filesystem.go
+++ b/lang/funcs/filesystem.go
@@ -100,6 +100,20 @@ func MakeTemplateFileFunc(baseDir string, funcsCb func() map[string]function.Fun
 			Variables: varsVal.AsValueMap(),
 		}
 
+		// We require all of the variables to be valid HCL identifiers, because
+		// otherwise there would be no way to refer to them in the template
+		// anyway. Rejecting this here gives better feedback to the user
+		// than a syntax error somewhere in the template itself.
+		for n := range ctx.Variables {
+			if !hclsyntax.ValidIdentifier(n) {
+				// This error message intentionally doesn't describe _all_ of
+				// the different permutations that are technically valid as an
+				// HCL identifier, but rather focuses on what we might
+				// consider to be an "idiomatic" variable name.
+				return cty.DynamicVal, function.NewArgErrorf(1, "invalid template variable name %q: must start with a letter, followed by zero or more letters, digits, and underscores", n)
+			}
+		}
+
 		// We'll pre-check references in the template here so we can give a
 		// more specialized error message than HCL would by default, so it's
 		// clearer that this problem is coming from a templatefile call.
diff --git a/lang/funcs/filesystem_test.go b/lang/funcs/filesystem_test.go
index 341e616cf..12e58523e 100644
--- a/lang/funcs/filesystem_test.go
+++ b/lang/funcs/filesystem_test.go
@@ -86,6 +86,14 @@ func TestTemplateFile(t *testing.T) {
 			cty.StringVal("Hello, Jodie!"),
 			``,
 		},
+		{
+			cty.StringVal("testdata/hello.tmpl"),
+			cty.MapVal(map[string]cty.Value{
+				"name!": cty.StringVal("Jodie"),
+			}),
+			cty.NilVal,
+			`invalid template variable name "name!": must start with a letter, followed by zero or more letters, digits, and underscores`,
+		},
 		{
 			cty.StringVal("testdata/hello.tmpl"),
 			cty.ObjectVal(map[string]cty.Value{
diff --git a/website/docs/configuration/functions/templatefile.html.md b/website/docs/configuration/functions/templatefile.html.md
index 77cf80df8..55756bed9 100644
--- a/website/docs/configuration/functions/templatefile.html.md
+++ b/website/docs/configuration/functions/templatefile.html.md
@@ -29,7 +29,9 @@ into a separate file for readability.
 The "vars" argument must be a map. Within the template file, each of the keys
 in the map is available as a variable for interpolation. The template may
 also use any other function available in the Terraform language, except that
-recursive calls to `templatefile` are not permitted.
+recursive calls to `templatefile` are not permitted. Variable names must
+each start with a letter, followed by zero or more letters, digits, or
+underscores.
 
 Strings in the Terraform language are sequences of Unicode characters, so
 this function will interpret the file contents as UTF-8 encoded text and