First, you specify the name of table that you want to create after the CREATE TABLE clause. The table name must be unique within a database. The IF NOT EXISTS is an optional part of the statement that allows you to check if the table that you are creating already exists in the database. If this is the case, MySQL will ignore the whole statement and will not create any new table. It is highly recommended that you to use IF NOT EXISTS in every CREATE TABLE statement for preventing from an error of creating a new table that already exists.