I don't understand why the use of a case when a simple function would do the job. . .

My original suggestion fulfills the requirements: -

DECLARE @getmonth TINYINT,

@datestring VARCHAR(20),

@input VARCHAR(20)

SET @input = 'January'

SET @datestring = @input + ' 1 2010'

SET @getmonth = MONTH(CAST(@datestring AS DATETIME))

SELECT @getmonth

As does the post below mine which basically shortened the code.

DECLARE @month AS VARCHAR(20)

SET @Month = 'January'

SELECT MONTH(@month + ' 1 2010')

They'd both also work if you used short names for the months, e.g. "Jan", "Feb" etc. Making them more efficient than a Case, since you'd need to have 24 arguments to replicate it.

Unless I'm missing something?