Cannot return class attribute from function - function

Question

I would like to get familiar with classes and attributes and defined the following minimal example in the Python console:
class test:
def __init__(self, name):
self.name = name
I initiated a class instance:
>>> first_test = test('Linus')
>>> first_test.name
'Linus'
Works fine. I also tried getattr() to get the value of the attribute:
>>> getattr(first_test, 'name')
'Linus'
No problem. Next, I tried packing getattr() into a function:
def return_name(instance, attribute):
return getattr(instance, attribute)
Again, all fine:
>>> return_name(first_test, 'name')
'Linus'
Now, I wanted to try the same thing with the instance.attribute syntax:
def return_name(instance, attribute):
return instance.attribute
But for some reason, this fails:
>>> return_name(first_test, name)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'name' is not defined
Another try, this time passing the attribute name as a string:
>>> return_name(first_test, 'name')
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "<stdin>", line 2, in return_name
AttributeError: 'test' object has no attribute 'attribute'
Fail again?
What is the problem here?