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