Select distinct field won't return distinct value

["Mohamed Yusuf" <myainab@xxxxxxxxx>]

I want select distinct field and return value of that field, but I have
problem which is: select distinct returns duplicate value. eg, I wan select
distinct customer name and id from the customer table. one customer may have
different cus_ids since cus_ids are auto increment and depend on the
purchased items. so what I want is to select distinct customer name so that
I can print customer name and customer id once.

here is algorithm;

select distinct cus_name, cus_id from customers order by cus_name asc
While row is not empty do{
echo"<a href=\"page?cus=cus_id\">costomer name</a><br />";
}