It takes an optional LIKE clause that indicates which character set names to match.
mysql> mysql> mysql> SHOW CHARACTER SET LIKE 'latin%'; +---------+-----------------------------+-------------------+--------+ | Charset | Description | Default collation | Maxlen | +---------+-----------------------------+-------------------+--------+ | latin1 | cp1252 West European | latin1_swedish_ci | 1 | | latin2 | ISO 8859-2 Central European | latin2_general_ci | 1 | | latin5 | ISO 8859-9 Turkish | latin5_turkish_ci | 1 | | latin7 | ISO 8859-13 Baltic | latin7_general_ci | 1 | +---------+-----------------------------+-------------------+--------+ 4 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql> mysql>