enum types are called "enumeration types" not because they are containers that "enumerate" values (which they aren't), but because they are defined by enumerating the possible values for a variable of that type.

(Actually, that's a bit more complicated than that - enum types are considered to have an "underlying" integer type, which means each enum value corresponds to an integer value (this is typically implicit, but can be manually specified). C# was designed in a way so that you could stuff any integer of that type into the enum variable, even if it isn't a "named" value.)

The GetNames method can be used to retrieve an array of strings which are the names of the enum values, as the name suggests.

enum types are called "enumeration types" not because they are containers that "enumerate" values (which they aren't), but because they are defined by enumerating the possible values for a variable of that type.

(Actually, that's a bit more complicated than that - enum types are considered to have an "underlying" integer type, which means each enum value corresponds to an integer value (this is typically implicit, but can be manually specified). C# was designed in a way so that you could stuff any integer of that type into the enum variable, even if it isn't a "named" value.)

The System.Enum.GetNames method can be used to retrieve an array of strings which are the names of the enum values, as the name suggests.

EDIT: Should have suggested the System.Enum.GetValues method instead. Oops.