Let's say you have an existing with an existing column, but you don't like the name of that column, can you rename that column name? The answer is yes. You can use the ALTER TABLE ... RENAME COLUMN statement to do this. See the following SQL script:

SQL> CREATE TABLE emp_dept_90

2 AS SELECT * FROM employees WHERE department_id=90;

Table created.

SQL> SELECT first_name, last_name FROM emp_dept_90;

FIRST_NAME   LAST_NAME   

-------------------- -------------------------

Steven   King    

Neena   Kochhar   

Lex   De Haan   

SQL> ALTER TABLE emp_dept_90 RENAME COLUMN first_name

2 TO fname;

Table altered.

SQL> SELECT fname, last_name FROM emp_dept_90;

FNAME   LAST_NAME   

-------------------- -------------------------

Steven   King    

Neena   Kochhar   

Lex   De Haan

As you can see the column "first_name" is nicely changed to "fname".