drop table if exists person; CREATE TABLE `person` ( `p_id` int(11) default NULL, `p_givenname` char(10) character set utf8 default NULL ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1; set names koi8r; insert into person values('1','ñ'),(2,'æ'); SELECT CONCAT(' ',CONCAT(' - ',p_givenname)) FROM person p; SELECT CONCAT(p_id,CONCAT(' - ',p_givenname)) FROM person p; -- ñ and æ must be in the both resultsets.