Check the character set settings
mysql> mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'CHARACTER_SET%'; +--------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+ | Variable_name | Value | +--------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+ | character_set_client | latin1 | | character_set_connection | latin1 | | character_set_database | latin1 | | character_set_filesystem | binary | | character_set_results | latin1 | | character_set_server | latin1 | | character_set_system | utf8 | | character_sets_dir | c:\Java_Dev\WEB\release\java2sIDE\mysql\share\charsets\ | +--------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+ 8 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql>