What's the point of HTML forms `name` attribute?

What's the point of the name attribute on an HTML form? As far as I can tell, you can't read the form name on submission or do anything else with it. Does it serve a purpose?

In short, and probably oversimplifying a bit: It is used instead of id for browsers that don't understand document.getElementById.

These days it serves no real purpose. It is a legacy from the early days of the browser wars before the use of name to describe how to send control values when a form is submitted and id to identify an element within the page was settled.

From the specification:

The name attribute represents the form's name within the forms collection.