Can we use “When” as column name in CREATE TABLE statement?

Before beginning, let us try to set ‘when’ as column name while using CREATE TABLE statement −

mysql> create table DemoTable693(
   StudentId int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
   StudentName varchar(100),
   When datetime
);

This will produce the following output. An error would be visible:

ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax;
check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version
for the right syntax to use near 'When datetime at line 5

You need to wrap the reserved word using backticks, for example, `when`. Let us first create a table and implement the same:

mysql> create table DemoTable693 (
   StudentId int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
   StudentName varchar(100),
   `When` datetime
);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.63 sec)

Insert some records in the table using insert command:

mysql> insert into DemoTable693(StudentName,`When`) values('Chris',NOW());
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.22 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable693(StudentName,`When`) values('Robert',CURDATE());
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.22 sec)

Display all records from the table using select statement -

mysql> select *from DemoTable693;

This will produce the following output -

+-----------+-------------+---------------------+
| StudentId | StudentName | When                |
+-----------+-------------+---------------------+
| 1         | Chris       | 2019-07-21 18:57:19 |
| 2         | Robert      | 2019-07-21 00:00:00 |
+-----------+-------------+---------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)