PostgreSQL query many escape characters?

Hello,

I am very new to this process, so please forgive me if this is a silly  
question.  I have a number of PostgreSQL tables that use the naming  
convention that capitalizes the first character of each word, therefor  
the data names require quotes.  When I put together my queries using  
parameters for the selected columns and the table names and use  
pg_query_params instead of pg_query to build the query?  Doing it  
without the parameterization looks like this...

$query = "SELECT tp.\"peopleId\",\"fName\",\"mName\",\"lName\", 
\"contactItem\"
              		FROM \"tblPeople\" tp
               		LEFT JOIN \"brdgPeopleContactInformation\" bpci ON tp. 
\"peopleId\" = bpci.\"peopleId\"
               		LEFT JOIN \"tblContactInformation\" tci ON bpci. 
\"contactInformationId\" =
               							tci.\"contactInformationId\"
               		WHERE (\"lName\" like '$l_name' AND \"fName\" IS  
NULL) OR (\"lName\" like '$l_name' AND \"fName\"
               		 				LIKE '$f_name')
               		ORDER BY \"lName\",\"fName\",\"mName\"";
     $SciName = pg_query($query);

This actually works, believe it or not, but my next query where I'm  
doing an insert to the tables does not.

Thank you in advance for your time.

Carol