Is there a way to use a relative named range as the source data for a series on a chart?

For example, if the name 'A' is defined as =indirect(sheet1!A1) and I type 'B' in cell A1 (and B is the name of a valid one-dimensional range), it seems like in-cell formulas will treat 'A' and 'B' the same, e.g.

=max(A)

and

=max(B)

return the same result. However, it seems like I can reference B as the source data for a series on a chart, but not A. Why wouldn't this work?

thanks,
peter