MySQL 8.0 FAQ: MySQL Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Character Sets A.11.1. What CJK character sets are available in MySQL? The list of CJK character sets may vary depending on your MySQL version. For example, the  gb18030  character set is not supported prior to MySQL 5.7.4. However, since the name of the applicable language appears in the  DESCRIPTION  column for every entry in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.CHARACTER_SETS  table, you can obtain a current list of all the non- Unicode CJK character sets using this query: (For more information, see Section 26.3.4, “The INFORMATION_SCHEMA CHARACTER_SETS Table” .) MySQL supports three variants of the  GB  ( Guojia Biaozhun , or  National Standard , or  Simplified Chinese ) character sets which are official in the People’s Republic of China:  gb2312 ,  gbk , and (as of MySQL 5.7.4)  gb18030 . Sometimes people try to insert  gbk  characters into  gb2312 , and it works most of the time because gbk  is a superset of  gb2312 . But eventually they try to insert a rarer Chinese character and it does not work. (For an example, see Bug #16072). Here, we try to clarify exactly what characters are legitimate in  gb2312  or  gbk , with reference to the official documents. Please check these references before reporting  gb2312  or  gbk  bugs: •The MySQL  gbk  character set is in reality “Microsoft code page 936” . This differs from the official gbk  for characters  A1A4  (middle dot),  A1AA  (em dash),  A6E0-A6F5 , and  A8BB-A8C0 . 5258 A.11.9 Why does my GUI front end or browser display CJK characters incorrectly in my application using Access, PHP, or another API? ................................................................................... 5264 A.11.10 I’ve upgraded to MySQL 8.0. How can I revert to behavior like that in MySQL 4.0 with regard to character sets? ............................................................................................................... 5264 A.11.11 Why do some  LIKE  and  FULLTEXT  searches with CJK characters fail? .............................. 5266 A.11.12 How do I know whether character  X  is available in all character sets? ................................. 5266 A.11.13 Why do CJK strings sort incorrectly in Unicode? (I) ........................................................... 5267 A.11.14 Why do CJK strings sort incorrectly in Unicode? (II) ........................................................... 5267 A.11.15 Why are my supplementary characters rejected by MySQL? .............................................. 5267 A.11.16 Should “CJK”  be “CJKV” ? ................................................................................................ 5268 A.11.17 Does MySQL permit CJK characters to be used in database and table names? ................... 5268 A.11.18 Where can I find translations of the MySQL Manual into Chinese, Japanese, and Korean? ... 5268 A.11.19 Where can I get help with CJK and related issues in MySQL? ............................................ 5268 +--------------------+---------------------------------+ | CHARACTER_SET_NAME | DESCRIPTION | +--------------------+---------------------------------+ | big5 | Big5 Traditional Chinese | | cp932 | SJIS for Windows Japanese | | eucjpms | UJIS for Windows Japanese | | euckr | EUC-KR Korean | | gb18030 | China National Standard GB18030 | | gb2312 | GB2312 Simplified Chinese | | gbk | GBK Simplified Chinese | | sjis | Shift-JIS Japanese | | ujis | EUC-JP Japanese | +--------------------+---------------------------------+ mysql>  SELECT CHARACTER_SET_NAME, DESCRIPTION FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.CHARACTER_SETS WHERE DESCRIPTION LIKE ’%Chin%’ OR DESCRIPTION LIKE ’%Japanese%’ OR DESCRIPTION LIKE ’%Korean%’ ORDER BY CHARACTER_SET_NAME;