Question: My MySQL table country\_phone\_codes looks something like this

```
id     country_code     area_code     name
------------------------------------------------------------
1   |   93           |  93         |  AFGHANISTAN
2   |   93           |  9370       |  AFGHANISTAN - MOBILE
3   |   93           |  9375       |  AFGHANISTAN - MOBILE
4   |   355          |  355        |  ALBANIA
5   |   355          |  35568      |  ALBANIA - MOBILE - AMC
6   |   213          |  213        |  ALGERIA
7   |   213          |  2131       |  ALGERIA - CAT
------------------------------------------------------------

```

These are just few records of more than 28000 records. I am trying to formulate a query that will provide me with the result like this-

```
country_code    name
-----------------------------
93            |  AFGHANISTAN
355           |  ALBANIA
213           |  ALGERIA
-----------------------------

```

By using `SELECT DISTINCT(country_code) FROM country_phone_codes ORDER BY country_code LIMIT 0,260`, I am able to get distinct country codes. But how do I get corresponding country name?

Answer: 
To select distinct country\_code, name pairs:

```
select country_code, name
from country_phone_codes
where country_code = area_code;

```
Seems like you have a one-to-many relationship between country\_code and name.

If you do a simple GROUP BY query like

```
SELECT country_code,name FROM country_phone_codes GROUP BY country_code

```

you might end up with

```
country_code    name
-----------------------------
93            |  AFGHANISTAN
355           |  ALBANIA
213           |  ALGERIA
124           |  COUNTRY - MOBILE
-----------------------------

```

assuming all your country names are

```
COUNTRY
COUNTRY - SOMETHING
COUNTRY - SOMETHING - SOMETHING

```

would be better to use

```
SELECT country_code,MIN(name) FROM country_phone_codes GROUP BY country_code

```

so you end up with

```
country_code    name
-----------------------------
93            |  AFGHANISTAN
355           |  ALBANIA
213           |  ALGERIA
xxx           |  COUNTRY
-----------------------------

```

this is assuming that you have both of those records in your table

```
id     country_code     area_code     name
------------------------------------------------------------
xx   |   xxx          |  xx        |  COUNTRY
xx   |   xxx          |  xx        |  COUNTRY - SOMETHING
------------------------------------------------------------

```