Emacs highlight variables not prefixed by?

Question

I'm trying to highlight names like "myname", but not "?myname". I've used this regex but the highlight includes the preceding characters:

("[^\\?[:word:]][[:alpha:]][_[:word:]]*" . font-lock-function-name-face)

For example, in "(myname == 1)" the "(" is colored in addition to "myname".

Is there a work around for this?

Answer 1

What's wrong with just "[[:alpha:]][_[:word:]]*"?

Character ? has neither alpha nor word syntax. Same for character (.