Get Day Name from Datetime in pandas DataFrame

To extract the day name from a datetime column in pandas, you can use the day_name() function. day_name() returns a string with the name of the day of a datetime.

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame({
    "date": ["2021-09-30", "2021-12-31", "2022-03-31", "2022-06-30", "2022-09-30", "2022-12-31"],
    "sales": [100,30,50,60,10,80]
})

df["date"] = pd.to_datetime(df["date"])

df["day_name"] = df["date"].dt.day_name()

print(df)

#Output:
        date  sales  day_name
0 2021-09-30    100  Thursday
1 2021-12-31     30    Friday
2 2022-03-31     50  Thursday
3 2022-06-30     60  Thursday
4 2022-09-30     10    Friday
5 2022-12-31     80  Saturday

When working with data which contains information over time, the ability to extract certain pieces of information from our data easily is valuable.

One such piece of information is getting the day name from a date when using pandas in Python.

To get the name of day of the week from a datetime column in pandas, you can use the pandas datetime day_name() function.

The day_name() function returns the name of the day of the week.

Below is a simple example which shows you how to get the day name from a datetime columns in a pandas DataFrame.

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame({
    "date": ["2021-09-30", "2021-12-31", "2022-03-31", "2022-06-30", "2022-09-30", "2022-12-31"],
    "sales": [100,30,50,60,10,80]
})

df["date"] = pd.to_datetime(df["date"])

df["day_name"] = df["date"].dt.day_name()

print(df)

#Output:
        date  sales  day_name
0 2021-09-30    100  Thursday
1 2021-12-31     30    Friday
2 2022-03-31     50  Thursday
3 2022-06-30     60  Thursday
4 2022-09-30     10    Friday
5 2022-12-31     80  Saturday

Get Day of Week from Datetime in pandas

If you want to get the day of the week from a datetime, instead of day name, then you can use pandas datetime day_name() function.

The “dayofweek” property returns a 64-bit integer between 0 and 6, where 0 represents Monday and 6 represents Sunday.

Below is the same DataFrame as above but now we will get the day of the week number for each datetime in the date column.

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame({
    "date": ["2021-09-30", "2021-12-31", "2022-03-31", "2022-06-30", "2022-09-30", "2022-12-31"],
    "sales": [100,30,50,60,10,80]
})

df["date"] = pd.to_datetime(df["date"])

df["dayofweek"] = df["date"].dt.dayofweek

print(df)

#Output:
        date  sales  dayofweek
0 2021-09-30    100          3
1 2021-12-31     30          4
2 2022-03-31     50          3
3 2022-06-30     60          3
4 2022-09-30     10          4
5 2022-12-31     80          5

Hopefully this article has been useful for you to learn how to get the day name from a datetime variable in a pandas DataFrame in Python.