How to make a lowercase month name with \today

Question

All I wish to do is to use \today to output in the format "18 november 2013". With the datetime package I can get to "18 November 2013" with:

 \documentclass[11pt,twoside,onecolumn,openany,final]{memoir}

 \usepackage[nodayofweek]{datetime}

 \newdateformat{mydate}{{\THEDAY}{ }\monthname[\THEMONTH] \THEYEAR}

 \begin{document}

 \mydate\today

 \end{document}

but after that point I have been unable to have any success in making a lowercase month name. The closest I have been came by adding in the \MakeLowercase command here:

{{\THEDAY}{ }\monthname\MakeLowercase[\THEMONTH] \THEYEAR}

but that for some reason brings in numerals and ends up like this:

18 November [11] 2013

Again, that still falls short of what I would like it to be. Is there a way to to bring in a lowercase command properly here so that for any given date output by \today the format is

18 november 2013

Answer 1

As with Datetime capitalize month, you can redefine the language-appropriate definition that extracts the month name:

\documentclass[11pt,twoside,onecolumn,openany,final]{memoir}% http://ctan.org/pkg/memoir
\usepackage[nodayofweek]{datetime}% http://ctan.org/pkg/datetime
\newdateformat{mydate}{{\THEDAY}{ }\monthname[\THEMONTH] \THEYEAR}
\makeatletter
\renewcommand*{\monthnameenglish}[1][\month]{%
  \@orgargctr=#1\relax
  \ifcase\@orgargctr
  \PackageError{datetime}{Invalid Month number \the\@orgargctr}{Month
  numbers should go from 1 (january) to 12 (december)}%
  \or january%
  \or february%
  \or march%
  \or april%
  \or may%
  \or june%
  \or july%
  \or august%
  \or september%
  \or october%
  \or november%
  \or december%
  \else \PackageError{datetime}{Invalid Month number \the\@orgargctr}{%
  Month numbers should go from 1 (january) to 12 (december)}%
  \fi
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}

\mydate\today

\end{document}

The above works since the default english language is chosen. If you're interested in have non-title-case "short month names", you'd have to redefine also \shortmonthnameenglish:

\renewcommand*{\shortmonthnameenglish}[1][\month]{%
  \@orgargctr=#1\relax
  \ifcase\@orgargctr
  \PackageError{datetime}{Invalid Month number \the\@orgargctr}{Month
  numbers should go from 1 (jan) to 12 (dec)}%
  \or jan%
  \or feb%
  \or mar%
  \or apr%
  \or may%
  \or jun%
  \or jul%
  \or aug%
  \or sept%
  \or oct%
  \or nov%
  \or dec%
  \else%
  \PackageError{datetime}%
  {Invalid Month number \the\@orgargctr}%
  {Month numbers should go from 1 (jan) to 12 (dec)}%
\fi
}

Answer 2

Define \Monthname, instead of \monthname.

 \documentclass[11pt,twoside,onecolumn,openany,final]{memoir}
 \newcommand\Monthname[1][EMPTY]{%
  \ifnum1=#1january\else
  \ifnum2=#1february\else
  \ifnum3=#1march\else
  \ifnum4=#1april\else
  \ifnum5=#1may\else
  \ifnum6=#1june\else
  \ifnum7=#1july\else
  \ifnum8=#1august\else
  \ifnum9=#1september\else
  \ifnum10=#1october\else
  \ifnum11=#1november\else
  \ifnum12=#1december\else
  \fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi
}
 \usepackage[nodayofweek]{datetime}

 \newdateformat{mydate}{{\THEDAY}{ }\Monthname[\THEMONTH] \THEYEAR}

 \begin{document}
\mydate\today

 \end{document}