Basic SELECT statement: Get the length of name of all employees

Last update on February 02 2026 11:02:22 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

MySQL Basic Select Statement: Exercise-16 with Solution

Write a query to get the length of the employee names (first_name, last_name) from employees table.

Sample table: employees

+-------------+-------------+-------------+----------+--------------------+------------+------------+----------+----------------+------------+---------------+
| EMPLOYEE_ID | FIRST_NAME  | LAST_NAME   | EMAIL    | PHONE_NUMBER       | HIRE_DATE  | JOB_ID     | SALARY   | COMMISSION_PCT | MANAGER_ID | DEPARTMENT_ID |
+-------------+-------------+-------------+----------+--------------------+------------+------------+----------+----------------+------------+---------------+
|         100 | Steven      | King        | SKING    | 515.123.4567       | 1987-06-17 | AD_PRES    | 24000.00 |           0.00 |          0 |   		  90 |
|         101 | Neena       | Kochhar     | NKOCHHAR | 515.123.4568       | 1987-06-18 | AD_VP      | 17000.00 |           0.00 |        100 |            90 |
|         102 | Lex         | De Haan     | LDEHAAN  | 515.123.4569       | 1987-06-19 | AD_VP      | 17000.00 |           0.00 |        100 |            90 |
|         103 | Alexander   | Hunold      | AHUNOLD  | 590.423.4567       | 1987-06-20 | IT_PROG    |  9000.00 |           0.00 |        102 |            60 |
|         104 | Bruce       | Ernst       | BERNST   | 590.423.4568       | 1987-06-21 | IT_PROG    |  6000.00 |           0.00 |        103 |            60 |
|         105 | David       | Austin      | DAUSTIN  | 590.423.4569       | 1987-06-22 | IT_PROG    |  4800.00 |           0.00 |        103 |            60 |
|         106 | Valli       | Pataballa   | VPATABAL | 590.423.4560       | 1987-06-23 | IT_PROG    |  4800.00 |           0.00 |        103 |            60 |
|         107 | Diana       | Lorentz     | DLORENTZ | 590.423.5567       | 1987-06-24 | IT_PROG    |  4200.00 |           0.00 |        103 |            60 |
|         108 | Nancy       | Greenberg   | NGREENBE | 515.124.4569       | 1987-06-25 | FI_MGR     | 12000.00 |           0.00 |        101 |           100 |
.........
|         206 | William     | Gietz       | WGIETZ   | 515.123.8181       | 1987-10-01 | AC_ACCOUNT |  8300.00 |           0.00 |        205 |           110 |
+-------------+-------------+-------------+----------+--------------------+------------+------------+----------+----------------+------------+---------------+

View the table

Code:

-- Selecting the first_name and last_name columns
SELECT first_name, last_name, 
-- Calculating the sum of the lengths of first_name and last_name columns and aliasing it as 'Length of Names'
LENGTH(first_name) + LENGTH(last_name) 'Length of Names' 
-- Selecting data from the employees table
FROM employees;

Explanation:

This SQL query selects the first_name and last_name columns from the employees table.
The LENGTH() function is used to calculate the number of characters in each name column (first_name and last_name).
The lengths of the first_name and last_name columns are added together to get the total length of the names.
This total length is displayed in the result set with the alias 'Length of Names'.

Pictorial Presentation of the above query

Result :

Go to:

PREV : Write a query to get first name of all employees table after removing white spaces from both side.
NEXT : Write a query to check if the first_name fields of the employees table contains numbers.

MySQL Code Editor:

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