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More of a 'why' than a 'how' question...

DateValue[{2014,4,12},"DayName"]

returns Saturday, a symbol rather than the string "Saturday".

Every other result that DateValue returns that is not a number is a string not a symbol so why the special case for Days of the Week?

Just to add to the confusion DayNameShort and DayNameInitial do return strings.

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As shown inthe documentation, the third parameter of DateValue provides control of the form of the value returned. If you want a String specify that.

DateValue[{2014, 4, 12}, "DayName", String]

"Saturday"

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String

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  • $\begingroup$ Hmm, despite staring at the docs for a long time I seem to have deliberately ignored that one. Many thanks as that solves a different problem as well. $\endgroup$
    – Ymareth
    Commented Mar 31, 2015 at 10:13
  • $\begingroup$ +1. Somewhat related. Any reason that the day names are available as Symbols as well as Strings, but the month names only as Strings? $\endgroup$
    – Romke Bontekoe
    Commented Mar 17, 2019 at 8:31
  • $\begingroup$ @RomkeBontekoe - I don't know why Wolfram (company) decided to build in definitions for days as symbols but not months. DateValue is then consistent with that decision. $\endgroup$
    – Bob Hanlon
    Commented Mar 17, 2019 at 12:31

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