How to insert Greek characters into sqlserver table

Question

I have a simple insert, but with Greek characters

INSERT INTO tmp (fname) VALUES ('ΚΩΝΣΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΣ') 

I tried to create a table in two ways:

 create table tmp (fname varchar(40)) 

and

 create table tmp (fname nvarchar(40)) 

When I then select the data:

 select * from tmp 

I get:

 ?O?S???????S 

I use:

 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - 9.00.4060.00 (Intel X86) Mar 17 2011 13:20:38 Copyright (c) 1988-2005 Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition on Windows NT 5.2 (Build 3790: Service Pack 2) 

and

 Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (SP1) - 11.0.3000.0 (X64) Oct 19 2012 13:38:57 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.1 <X64> (Build 7601: Service Pack 1) (Hypervisor) 

he does the same in both.

I use:

 Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 11.0.2100.60 

to create a table and insert data, etc.

How can I store Greek characters correctly or are they displayed correctly when I select them?

Answer 1

Try using the Unicode prefix character string:

 create table tmp (fname nvarchar(40)) INSERT INTO tmp (fname) VALUES (N'ΚΩΝΣΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΣ') 

There may also be a problem with sorting columns, please set

 create table tmp (fname nvarchar(40) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1253_CI_AI) 

From MSDN :

Prefix Unicode character string constants with the letter N. Without the prefix N, the string is converted to the default database code page. This default code page may not recognize certain characters.