Reserved keywords

We provide here a listing of reserved words, grouped by the categories from which they are drawn, all of which have a special meaning in Cypher®. In addition to this, we list a number of words that are reserved for future use.

These reserved words are not permitted to be used as identifiers in the following contexts:

  • Variables

  • Function names

  • Parameters

If any reserved keyword is escaped — i.e. is encapsulated by backticks `, such as `AND` — it would become a valid identifier in the above contexts. For more information on naming rules, see Naming rules and recommendations.

Clauses

  • CALL

  • CREATE

  • DELETE

  • DETACH

  • EXISTS

  • FOREACH

  • LOAD

  • MATCH

  • MERGE

  • OPTIONAL

  • REMOVE

  • RETURN

  • SET

  • START

  • UNION

  • UNWIND

  • WITH

Subclauses

  • LIMIT

  • ORDER

  • SKIP

  • WHERE

  • YIELD

Modifiers

  • ASC

  • ASCENDING

  • ASSERT

  • BY

  • CSV

  • DESC

  • DESCENDING

  • ON

Expressions

  • ALL

  • CASE

  • ELSE

  • END

  • THEN

  • WHEN

Operators

  • AND

  • AS

  • CONTAINS

  • DISTINCT

  • ENDS

  • IN

  • IS

  • NOT

  • OR

  • STARTS

  • XOR

Schema

  • CONSTRAINT

  • CREATE

  • DROP

  • EXISTS

  • INDEX

  • NODE

  • KEY

  • UNIQUE

Hints

  • INDEX

  • JOIN

  • PERIODIC

  • COMMIT

  • SCAN

  • USING

Literals

  • false

  • null

  • true

Reserved for future use

  • ADD

  • DO

  • FOR

  • MANDATORY

  • OF

  • REQUIRE

  • SCALAR