Why does this piece of code work the way it does?

x = 3
print(dir())   #output indicates that x is defined in the global scope
del (x)
print(dir())   #output indicates that x is not defined in the global scope

My understanding is that del is a keyword in Python, and what follows del should be a name. (name) is not a name. Why does the example seem to show that del (name) works the same as del name?

The definition of the del statement is:

del_stmt ::=  "del" target_list

and from the definition of target_list:

target_list ::=  target ("," target)* [","]
target      ::=  identifier| "(" target_list ")"| "[" [target_list] "]"| ...

you can see that parentheses around the list of targets are allowed.

For example, if you define x,y = 1,2, all of these are allowed and have the same effect:

del x,y
del (x,y)
del (x),[y]
del [x,(y)]
del ([x], (y))