DATENAME

Returns a character string representing the specified datepart of the specified date.

Syntax

DATENAME ( datepart , date )

Arguments

datepart

Is the parameter that specifies the part of the date to return. The table lists dateparts and abbreviations recognized by Microsoft® SQL Server™.

The weekday (dw) datepart returns the day of the week (Sunday, Monday, and so on).

Is an expression that returns a datetime or smalldatetime value, or a character string in a date format. Use the datetime data type for dates after January 1, 1753. Store as character data for earlier dates. When entering datetime values, always enclose them in quotation marks. Because smalldatetime is accurate only to the minute, when a smalldatetime value is used, seconds and milliseconds are always 0. For more information about specifying dates, see datetime and smalldatetime. For more information about specifying time values, see Time Formats.

If you specify only the last two digits of the year, values less than or equal to the last two digits of the value of the two digit year cutoff configuration option are in the same century as the cutoff year. Values greater than the last two digits of the value of this option are in the century that precedes the cutoff year. For example, if two digit year cutoff is 2049 (default), 49 is interpreted as 2049 and 2050 is interpreted as 1950. To avoid ambiguity, use four-digit years.

Return Types

nvarchar

Remarks

SQL Server automatically converts between character and datetime values as necessary, for example, when you compare a character value with a datetime value.

Examples

This example extracts the month name from the date returned by GETDATE.

SELECT DATENAME(month, getdate()) AS 'Month Name'

Here is the result set:

Month Name                     
------------------------------ 
February                       

See Also

CAST and CONVERT

Data Types

Date and Time Functions