diff --git a/proxmox-api-macro/src/api.rs b/proxmox-api-macro/src/api.rs
index 91f74f84..96a76a12 100644
--- a/proxmox-api-macro/src/api.rs
+++ b/proxmox-api-macro/src/api.rs
@@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ impl TryFrom<JSONObject> for Schema {
             properties: obj.into_iter().try_fold(
                 Vec::new(),
                 |mut properties, (key, value)| -> Result<_, syn::Error> {
-                    properties.push((Ident::from(key), value.try_into()?));
+                    properties.push((key.into_ident()?, value.try_into()?));
                     Ok(properties)
                 },
             )?,
diff --git a/proxmox-api-macro/src/util.rs b/proxmox-api-macro/src/util.rs
index e55572bf..5a927d2c 100644
--- a/proxmox-api-macro/src/util.rs
+++ b/proxmox-api-macro/src/util.rs
@@ -10,6 +10,13 @@ use syn::spanned::Spanned;
 use syn::Token;
 
 /// A more relaxed version of Ident which allows hyphens.
+///
+/// Note that this acts both as an Ident and as a String so that we can easily access an &str
+/// (which Ident does not provide, instead, Ident always requires you to produce a newly owned
+/// `String`).
+/// Because of this the user also needs to be aware of the differences between idents and strings,
+/// and therefore we do not implement `Into<Ident>` anymore, but the user needs to explicitly ask
+/// for it via the `.into_ident()` method.
 #[derive(Clone, Debug)]
 pub struct SimpleIdent(Ident, String);
 
@@ -23,6 +30,19 @@ impl SimpleIdent {
         &self.1
     }
 
+    #[inline]
+    pub unsafe fn into_ident_unchecked(self) -> Ident {
+        self.0
+    }
+
+    #[inline]
+    pub fn into_ident(self) -> Result<Ident, syn::Error> {
+        if self.1.as_bytes().contains(&b'-') {
+            bail!(self.0 => "invalid identifier: '{}'", self.1);
+        }
+        Ok(unsafe { self.into_ident_unchecked() })
+    }
+
     //#[inline]
     //pub fn span(&self) -> Span {
     //    self.0.span()
@@ -50,12 +70,6 @@ impl From<Ident> for SimpleIdent {
     }
 }
 
-impl From<SimpleIdent> for Ident {
-    fn from(this: SimpleIdent) -> Ident {
-        this.0
-    }
-}
-
 impl fmt::Display for SimpleIdent {
     fn fmt(&self, f: &mut fmt::Formatter) -> fmt::Result {
         fmt::Display::fmt(&self.0, f)