Sentence Case SQL: RIGHT invalid Identifier

Question

I have tried to reference and use the follow examples that I have found:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/3a170b84-a332-4553-bcc5-1e7a85bce8f1/display-data-first-letter-uppercase-rest-lowercase

http://sqlmag.com/t-sql/how-title-case-column-value

Like so:

V1:

SELECT DISTINCT upper(left(county,1))+lower(right(county,len(county)-1)) 
  as county     
  FROM tablename     
  order by county

V2:

UPDATE tablename
  SET county = UPPER(LEFT(county, 1)) + LOWER(RIGHT(county, LEN(county) - 1));

to avoid:

Having DISTINCT populate copies of text that are identical but are case sensitive [I have tested DISTINCT alone and it did in fact display the copies]

What I want to do is:

Display the text as sentence case for each distinct county value in database

Issue:

The issue I face is the fact that RIGHT gives me an error of Invalid identifier

Is there a way to use my format but use a different value for RIGHT?

Full chunk of VB.net coding to fill a dropdownlist:

If Not County_List Is Nothing Then

   Dim County As OleDbCommand = New OleDbCommand("SELECT DISTINCT upper(left(county,1))+lower(right(county,len(county)-1)) as county FROM tablename order by county", conn)
   Dim OracleDataAdapterAds3 As OleDbDataAdapter = New OleDbDataAdapter
   OracleDataAdapterAds3.SelectCommand = County

   Dim DsAds3 As DataSet = New DataSet
   DsAds3.Clear()

      If Not (DsAds3 Is Nothing) Then
         OracleDataAdapterAds3.Fill(DsAds3, "tablename")
         County_List.DataSource = DsAds3
         County_List.DataMember = "tablename"
         County_List.DataBind()
         Dim newListItem As ListItem
         newListItem = New ListItem("", "")
         County_List.Items.Insert(0, newListItem)
         County_List.SelectedIndex = -1
     End If

End If

Answer 1

It looks like you are using Oracle. Oracle doesn't have LEFT() and RIGHT(). Instead, use SUBSTR():

SELECT DISTINCT upper(substr(county, 1, 1)) || lower(substr(county, 2)) as county     
FROM tablename     
ORDER BY county;

However, you might find INITCAP() (see documentation) more to your liking:

select distinct initcap(county) as county
from tablename
order by county;