category_name actually taking slug and not category name itself?

Hi all,

I have a query that should have pulled posts from the category name

query_posts('category_name=$categoryname&showposts=10');

something like this and $categoryname is pulled via theme options. It was working okay until I changed the slug to something other than default (which is usually same as the name).

So, I believe, its actually refering from slug and not name. How do I pull it from the category name ?