datename

Examples

Example 1

Finds the month name of a bigdatetime:

declare @a bigdatetime
select @a = "apr 12, 0001 00:00:00.010101"
select datename(mm, @a)
------------------------------
April

Example 2

Assumes a current date of November 20, 2000:

select datename(month, getdate())

November

Example 3

Finds the month name of a date:

declare @a date
select @a = "apr 12, 0001"
select datename(mm, @a)
------------------------------
    April

Example 4

Finds the seconds of a time:

declare @a time
select @a = "20:43:22"
select datename(ss, @a)
------------------------------
    22

Usage

• datename, a date function, returns the name of the specified part (such as the month “June”) of a datetime or smalldatetime value, as a character string. If the result is numeric, such as “23” for the day, it is still returned as a character string.

• Takes a date, time, bigdatetime, bigtime, datetime, or smalldatetime value as its second argument

• The date part weekday or dw returns the day of the week (Sunday, Monday, and so on) when used with datename.

• Since smalldatetime is accurate only to the minute, when a smalldatetime value is used with datename, seconds and milliseconds are always 0.

Standards

ANSI SQL – Compliance level: Transact-SQL extension.

Permissions

Any user can execute datename.

See also