diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 4d0ad8cd..c97e9d10 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,4 +1,8 @@
 # Changelog
+# 7.030
+ * [issue-408](https://github.com/techascent/tech.ml.dataset/issues/408) - xlsx files with numberic column names now load.
+ * dtype-next upgrade fixing a few issues, most notably [issue-99](https://github.com/cnuernber/dtype-next/issues/99).
+ 
 # 7.029
  * large parquet files now load - slowly as loading can't be parallelized - without holding onto more memory than they should.
  
diff --git a/src/tech/v3/dataset/io/context.clj b/src/tech/v3/dataset/io/context.clj
index c5952f08..c90dbd20 100644
--- a/src/tech/v3/dataset/io/context.clj
+++ b/src/tech/v3/dataset/io/context.clj
@@ -90,8 +90,12 @@
         colparser-compute-fn (reify Function
                                (apply [this col-idx]
                                  (let [colname (col-idx->colname col-idx)
-                                       colname (if (empty? colname)
+                                       colname (cond
+                                                 (number? colname)
+                                                 colname
+                                                 (empty? colname)
                                                  (make-colname col-idx)
+                                                 :else
                                                  (utils/remove-zero-width-spaces colname))
                                        colname (if (and ensure-unique-column-names?
                                                         (get colname->idx colname))
diff --git a/test/tech/v3/libs/fastexcel_test.clj b/test/tech/v3/libs/fastexcel_test.clj
index f9de2b12..c1aedbdb 100644
--- a/test/tech/v3/libs/fastexcel_test.clj
+++ b/test/tech/v3/libs/fastexcel_test.clj
@@ -92,3 +92,8 @@
       (is (some? (ds/column ds "column::2")))
       (is (some? (ds/column ds "column::4")))
       (is (some? (ds/column ds "column-1::6"))))))
+
+
+(deftest number-colname
+  (let [ds (ds/->dataset "test/data/number_column.xlsx")]
+    (is (= (first (ds/column-names ds)) 0.0))))