How to insert greek characters into sqlserver table - sql-server

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.