How to select distinct value from one column only

Question

I have records as follows:

key  | name
--------------
1111 | aa   
1111 | bb    
2222 | cc

I need to select the key and name when the key value is distinct. When I tried:

select distinct key, name from table;

I got all the rows since the query takes distinct for the combination of the columns: key and name. But, what I need is only distinct key and I don't care about the name. I have a lot of records, so I need a practical method.

Answer 1

Query:

SELECT `key`, MAX(`name`) as name
FROM `table`
GROUP BY `key`

Answer 2

Why not just:

SELECT distinct key
FROM table

or

SELECT key, name
FROM table
GROUP BY key

Answer 3

SELECT key, name FROM table GROUP BY key;

This returns one row for each distinct value of key, and the value of name is arbitrarily chosen from the rows in that group. In practice, MySQL tends to return the value of name from the row physically stored first in the group, but that's not guaranteed.

As other answers show, you can put name into an aggregate expression.