I figured out that inserting `hline' works for some languages.  consistent
behavior with ":colnames yes" would be ideal but this solves my problem.

#+BEGIN_SRC elisp
  '((one two) hline (1 3) (1 6))
#+END_SRC

On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 7:48 AM ian martins <ianxm@jhu.edu> wrote:

> Hello, I'm trying to figure out how to tell org that the first row of a
> src block result is a table header.
>
> from readthedocs
> <https://org-babel.readthedocs.io/en/latest/header-args/#colnames> it
> looks like ":colnames yes" should do this, but I haven't been able to get
> it to work, and the code
> <https://code.orgmode.org/bzg/org-mode/src/master/lisp/ob-core.el#L1671>
> doesn't appear to want that to happen. maybe that is special handling for
> R <https://code.orgmode.org/bzg/org-mode/src/master/lisp/ob-R.el#L164>.
>
> #+BEGIN_SRC elisp :colnames yes
>   '((one two) (1 3) (1 6))
> #+END_SRC
>
> I'm expecting an hline in the output but do not find one.
>
> I know ":colnames '(one two)" works, but I don't know the header value
> until I've generated the table.
>
> -Ian
>