diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt
index c82dc370e3e71..3f72259c0838c 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt
@@ -351,6 +351,8 @@ Bug Fixes
 - Bug in converting object elements of array-like objects to unsigned 64-bit integers (:issue:`4471`, :issue:`14982`)
 - Bug in ``pd.pivot_table()`` where no error was raised when values argument was not in the columns (:issue:`14938`)
 
+- Bug in ``DataFrame.groupby().describe()`` when grouping on ``Index`` containing tuples (:issue:`14848`)
+- Raise `ValueError` if creating a `MultiIndex` with tuples and not passing a list of names (:issue:`15110`)
 
 
 
diff --git a/pandas/indexes/multi.py b/pandas/indexes/multi.py
index 132543e0e386c..2afafaeb544d1 100644
--- a/pandas/indexes/multi.py
+++ b/pandas/indexes/multi.py
@@ -490,6 +490,10 @@ def _set_names(self, names, level=None, validate=True):
         that it only acts on copies
         """
 
+        # GH 15110
+        # Don't allow a single string for names in a MultiIndex
+        if names is not None and not is_list_like(names):
+            raise ValueError('Names should be list-like for a MultiIndex')
         names = list(names)
 
         if validate and level is not None and len(names) != len(level):
diff --git a/pandas/tests/groupby/test_groupby.py b/pandas/tests/groupby/test_groupby.py
index b00dc62206f57..8e61fa3a5fb66 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/groupby/test_groupby.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/groupby/test_groupby.py
@@ -1490,6 +1490,19 @@ def test_frame_describe_multikey(self):
         for name, group in groupedT:
             assert_frame_equal(result[name], group.describe())
 
+    def test_frame_describe_tupleindex(self):
+
+        # GH 14848 - regression from 0.19.0 to 0.19.1
+        df1 = DataFrame({'x': [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] * 3,
+                         'y': [10, 20, 30, 40, 50] * 3,
+                         'z': [100, 200, 300, 400, 500] * 3})
+        df1['k'] = [(0, 0, 1), (0, 1, 0), (1, 0, 0)] * 5
+        df2 = df1.rename(columns={'k': 'key'})
+        result = df1.groupby('k').describe()
+        expected = df2.groupby('key').describe()
+        expected.index.set_names(result.index.names, inplace=True)
+        assert_frame_equal(result, expected)
+
     def test_frame_groupby(self):
         grouped = self.tsframe.groupby(lambda x: x.weekday())
 
diff --git a/pandas/tests/indexes/test_multi.py b/pandas/tests/indexes/test_multi.py
index 16831219e0930..2861a1f56b24b 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/indexes/test_multi.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/indexes/test_multi.py
@@ -2554,3 +2554,12 @@ def test_unsortedindex(self):
 
         with assertRaises(KeyError):
             df.loc(axis=0)['q', :]
+
+    def test_tuples_with_name_string(self):
+        # GH 15110 and GH 14848
+
+        li = [(0, 0, 1), (0, 1, 0), (1, 0, 0)]
+        with assertRaises(ValueError):
+            pd.Index(li, name='abc')
+        with assertRaises(ValueError):
+            pd.Index(li, name='a')