need a hint on query

If any body could just give me a hint on this.

I have a table called 'gents_names' filled with many names.

What I need to do is count how many times the names appear in the table.

Example:
Name count

fred 10
chris 5
jack 16


any help? please

 

Select name, count(*)
from gents_names
group by name

that should work, but "name" might be a reserved word, depending on what SQL engine you're using.

 

thanks, its a bit more complexed than that, I used names etc to explain better.

Here is what I have thus far.

$result = mysql_db_query($database, "select refid, count(*) from aff_productsales WHERE adid = '".$_SESSION['aff_valid_admin']."' AND number = '$change' GROUP BY refid") 
    or die ("Database Error"); 
  
	if (mysql_num_rows($result)) 
  {
    while ($qry = mysql_fetch_array($result)) 
{
print "<font face=arial><TABLE border=1 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=3 align=center>";
    print "<TR><TH>Refferer</TH><TH>Click Count</TH>";
    print "</TR>";
   
      print "<TR>";
      print "<TD><font size=2>";
      print $qry[refid];
      print "</TD>";
      print "<TD><font size=2>";
      print "xxxxx";
      print "</TD>";
      print "</TR>";
  
    print "</TABLE>";
  }
}

PHP:

what would xxxx value be?

 

select refid, count(*) as 'my_counter' from aff_productsales WHERE adid = '".$_SESSION['aff_valid_admin']."' AND number = '$change' GROUP BY refid"

so your colname becomes 'my_counter' and you can use $qry['my_counter']. $qry[refid] should also be $qry['refid'], along with some other bad practises in your code (font tags? uppercase tags? no database class/functions?)

 

thanks, that worked. I appologise if my code offends, I'm part time self taught. But I appreciate your help. I'll fix what you mentioned.