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 have tried creating the 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'm using:

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)

it does the same in both.

I'm using:

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio  11.0.2100.60

to create the table and insert the data etc.

How do I get Greek characters to store correctly or if they are stored correctly to display correctly when I select them?

Answer 1

Try to use prefix Unicode character string:

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

Also there may be a problem with collation of the 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 N prefix, the string is converted to the default code page of the database. This default code page may not recognize certain characters.