How does nameof work?

I was just wondering how come nameof from C# 6, can access non static property just like if it was static. Here is an example

public class TestClass
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

public class Test
{
    public Test()
    {
        string name = nameof(TestClass.Name); // whats so speciall about nameof
        //string name2 = TestClass.Name; this won't compile obviously, 
    }
}

It's not "accessing" the property - that operator is purely a compiler mechanism to inject the "name" of the argument into the code. In this case it will replace nameof(TestClass.Name) with "Name". The fact that it's non-static is irrelevant.

nameof Interpreter gets resolved at compiletime and translated to a static string instead.
In your case nameof(TestClass.Name) you will only return "Name" as a string.
You have to use nameof(TestClass).
With nameof you can minimize redundancy in your code (For instance: you dont have to define a string for a propertyname or something like this by using nameof.

You can also use it to represent a classes name. But be aware! nameof(MyClass)
may not be the same as at runtime if you have an derived class! For runtime purposes use typeOf or .GetType() instead.