If you have an existing column in a table and you want to change the column name, you can use the "ALTER TABLE ... CHANGE" statement. This statement allows you to change the name of a column, and its definition. The tutorial script below gives you a good example:

mysql> ALTER TABLE tip CHANGE COLUMN subject

title VARCHAR(60);

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.51 sec)

Records: 1 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0

mysql> SHOW COLUMNS FROM tip;

+-------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------

| Field  | Type  | Null | Key | Default | Extra 

+-------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------

| id  | int(11) | NO | PRI |  |  

| title  | varchar(60) | YES |  | NULL |  

| description | varchar(256) | NO |  |  |  

| author | varchar(40) | YES |  | NULL |  

+-------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------

4 rows in set (0.02 sec)