If you are using Hive 1.3 you can use quarter() built in function.  Since you are using String data type for date  looks like you can use em .    Reference  -  https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/LanguageManual+UDF   int quarter(date/timestamp/string) Returns the quarter of the year for a date, timestamp, or string in the range 1 to 4 (as of Hive 1.3.0) Example: quarter('2015-04-08') = 2. ... View more

In the Hive version prior to 2.2.0 there is no function available, I added support for it recently, see HIVE-16234. Example SELECT trunc('2017-03-15', 'Q'); '2017-01-01' ... View more