dplyr::bind_cols(list(1, 2))
#> Error in cbind_all(x): Not compatible with STRSXP: [type=NULL].
dplyr::bind_cols(list(one = 1, two = 2))
#> # A tibble: 1 x 2
#> one two
#> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 1. 2.
Created on 2018-03-09 by the reprex package (v0.2.0).
Possibly relevant context: I came across this via purrr::map_dfc(). So the fact you need names and how/where to inject them is less obvious than the above reprex indicates. Hence a better error message would really pay off.