ProblemYou want to know the day of the week on which a date falls. SolutionUse the DAYNAME( ) function. DiscussionTo determine the name of the day of the week for a given date, use DAYNAME( ): mysql> SELECT CURDATE(), DAYNAME(CURDATE()); +------------+--------------------+ | CURDATE() | DAYNAME(CURDATE()) | +------------+--------------------+ | 2006-05-22 | Monday | +------------+--------------------+ DAYNAME( ) is often useful in conjunction with other date-related techniques. For example, to determine the day of the week for the first of the month, use the first-of-month expression from Section 6.13 as the argument to DAYNAME( ): mysql> SET @d = CURDATE(); mysql> SET @first = DATE_SUB(@d,INTERVAL DAYOFMONTH(@d)-1 DAY); mysql> SELECT @d AS 'starting date', -> @first AS '1st of month date', -> DAYNAME(@first) AS '1st of month day'; +---------------+-------------------+------------------+ | starting date | 1st of month date | 1st of month day | +---------------+-------------------+------------------+ | 2006-05-22 | 2006-05-01 | Monday | +---------------+-------------------+------------------+ |