Syntax:
LOWER(str)

Returns the string str with all characters changed to lowercase
according to the current character set mapping. The default is latin1
(cp1252 West European).

MariaDB> SELECT LOWER('QUADRATICALLY');
        -> 'quadratically'

LOWER() (and UPPER()) are ineffective when applied to binary strings
(BINARY, VARBINARY, BLOB). To perform lettercase conversion, convert
the string to a nonbinary string:

MariaDB> SET @str = BINARY 'New York';
MariaDB> SELECT LOWER(@str), LOWER(CONVERT(@str USING latin1));
+-------------+-----------------------------------+
| LOWER(@str) | LOWER(CONVERT(@str USING latin1)) |
+-------------+-----------------------------------+
| New York    | new york                          |
+-------------+-----------------------------------+

URL: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/lower/

