MAX For Varchar Or Character Expresions Or Strings

Say i have a COLUMN name varchar(20)

NAME:
----
john
john/a
john/b
john/a/a

------

I want to find the LONGEST NAME in the column and I am trying to use

: Select MAX(name) from tablename

SQL 2000 gives the max as per alphabetical order and in the above example the MAX is john/b

IS there any direct SQL statement to get the MAX name where MAX refers to the LONGEST in terms of length .


I have been able to do it with 2 sql statements where i first find the longest length and then give a query where i match the length..But is there any simpler way??