1.16 MySQL Server Locale Support

The locale indicated by the lc_time_names system variable controls the language used to display day and month names and abbreviations. This variable affects the output from the DATE_FORMAT(), DAYNAME(), and MONTHNAME() functions.

lc_time_names does not affect the STR_TO_DATE() or GET_FORMAT() function.

The lc_time_names value does not affect the result from FORMAT(), but this function takes an optional third parameter that enables a locale to be specified to be used for the result number's decimal point, thousands separator, and grouping between separators. Permissible locale values are the same as the legal values for the lc_time_names system variable.

Locale names have language and region subtags listed by IANA (http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry) such as 'ja_JP' or 'pt_BR'. The default value is 'en_US' regardless of your system's locale setting, but you can set the value at server startup, or set the GLOBAL value at runtime if you have privileges sufficient to set global system variables; see System Variable Privileges. Any client can examine the value of lc_time_names or set its SESSION value to affect the locale for its own connection.

mysql> SET NAMES 'utf8';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.09 sec)
mysql> SELECT @@lc_time_names;
+-----------------+
| @@lc_time_names |
+-----------------+
| en_US           |
+-----------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT DAYNAME('2010-01-01'), MONTHNAME('2010-01-01');
+-----------------------+-------------------------+
| DAYNAME('2010-01-01') | MONTHNAME('2010-01-01') |
+-----------------------+-------------------------+
| Friday                | January                 |
+-----------------------+-------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT DATE_FORMAT('2010-01-01','%W %a %M %b');
+-----------------------------------------+
| DATE_FORMAT('2010-01-01','%W %a %M %b') |
+-----------------------------------------+
| Friday Fri January Jan                  |
+-----------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SET lc_time_names = 'es_MX';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT @@lc_time_names;
+-----------------+
| @@lc_time_names |
+-----------------+
| es_MX           |
+-----------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT DAYNAME('2010-01-01'), MONTHNAME('2010-01-01');
+-----------------------+-------------------------+
| DAYNAME('2010-01-01') | MONTHNAME('2010-01-01') |
+-----------------------+-------------------------+
| viernes               | enero                   |
+-----------------------+-------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT DATE_FORMAT('2010-01-01','%W %a %M %b');
+-----------------------------------------+
| DATE_FORMAT('2010-01-01','%W %a %M %b') |
+-----------------------------------------+
| viernes vie enero ene                   |
+-----------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

The day or month name for each of the affected functions is converted from utf8 to the character set indicated by the character_set_connection system variable.

lc_time_names may be set to any of the following locale values. The set of locales supported by MySQL may differ from those supported by your operating system.

Locale Value	Meaning
ar_AE	Arabic - United Arab Emirates
ar_BH	Arabic - Bahrain
ar_DZ	Arabic - Algeria
ar_EG	Arabic - Egypt
ar_IN	Arabic - India
ar_IQ	Arabic - Iraq
ar_JO	Arabic - Jordan
ar_KW	Arabic - Kuwait
ar_LB	Arabic - Lebanon
ar_LY	Arabic - Libya
ar_MA	Arabic - Morocco
ar_OM	Arabic - Oman
ar_QA	Arabic - Qatar
ar_SA	Arabic - Saudi Arabia
ar_SD	Arabic - Sudan
ar_SY	Arabic - Syria
ar_TN	Arabic - Tunisia
ar_YE	Arabic - Yemen
be_BY	Belarusian - Belarus
bg_BG	Bulgarian - Bulgaria
ca_ES	Catalan - Spain
cs_CZ	Czech - Czech Republic
da_DK	Danish - Denmark
de_AT	German - Austria
de_BE	German - Belgium
de_CH	German - Switzerland
de_DE	German - Germany
de_LU	German - Luxembourg
el_GR	Greek - Greece
en_AU	English - Australia
en_CA	English - Canada
en_GB	English - United Kingdom
en_IN	English - India
en_NZ	English - New Zealand
en_PH	English - Philippines
en_US	English - United States
en_ZA	English - South Africa
en_ZW	English - Zimbabwe
es_AR	Spanish - Argentina
es_BO	Spanish - Bolivia
es_CL	Spanish - Chile
es_CO	Spanish - Colombia
es_CR	Spanish - Costa Rica
es_DO	Spanish - Dominican Republic
es_EC	Spanish - Ecuador
es_ES	Spanish - Spain
es_GT	Spanish - Guatemala
es_HN	Spanish - Honduras
es_MX	Spanish - Mexico
es_NI	Spanish - Nicaragua
es_PA	Spanish - Panama
es_PE	Spanish - Peru
es_PR	Spanish - Puerto Rico
es_PY	Spanish - Paraguay
es_SV	Spanish - El Salvador
es_US	Spanish - United States
es_UY	Spanish - Uruguay
es_VE	Spanish - Venezuela
et_EE	Estonian - Estonia
eu_ES	Basque - Spain
fi_FI	Finnish - Finland
fo_FO	Faroese - Faroe Islands
fr_BE	French - Belgium
fr_CA	French - Canada
fr_CH	French - Switzerland
fr_FR	French - France
fr_LU	French - Luxembourg
gl_ES	Galician - Spain
gu_IN	Gujarati - India
he_IL	Hebrew - Israel
hi_IN	Hindi - India
hr_HR	Croatian - Croatia
hu_HU	Hungarian - Hungary
id_ID	Indonesian - Indonesia
is_IS	Icelandic - Iceland
it_CH	Italian - Switzerland
it_IT	Italian - Italy
ja_JP	Japanese - Japan
ko_KR	Korean - Republic of Korea
lt_LT	Lithuanian - Lithuania
lv_LV	Latvian - Latvia
mk_MK	Macedonian - North Macedonia
mn_MN	Mongolia - Mongolian
ms_MY	Malay - Malaysia
nb_NO	Norwegian(Bokmål) - Norway
nl_BE	Dutch - Belgium
nl_NL	Dutch - The Netherlands
no_NO	Norwegian - Norway
pl_PL	Polish - Poland
pt_BR	Portugese - Brazil
pt_PT	Portugese - Portugal
rm_CH	Romansh - Switzerland
ro_RO	Romanian - Romania
ru_RU	Russian - Russia
ru_UA	Russian - Ukraine
sk_SK	Slovak - Slovakia
sl_SI	Slovenian - Slovenia
sq_AL	Albanian - Albania
sr_RS	Serbian - Serbia
sv_FI	Swedish - Finland
sv_SE	Swedish - Sweden
ta_IN	Tamil - India
te_IN	Telugu - India
th_TH	Thai - Thailand
tr_TR	Turkish - Turkey
uk_UA	Ukrainian - Ukraine
ur_PK	Urdu - Pakistan
vi_VN	Vietnamese - Vietnam
zh_CN	Chinese - China
zh_HK	Chinese - Hong Kong
zh_TW	Chinese - Taiwan