We had a BI project once where I had to extract relevant data from a sql 2000 db with (literally) the following naming convention.

Table1

Table2

Table3

etc

To make it worse all the columns in the tables where names as such

Column1

Column2

Column3

etc

....................

Where to start 🙁

There was a happy ending, as we put that DB gently to sleep on a quiet december morn, approximately 8 weeks after that first viewing.