Hannes, The output of \l is: gpdemo=# \l List of databases Name | Owner | Encoding | Access privileges ------------+---------+----------+--------------------- acn | gpadmin | UTF8 | gpdemo | gpadmin | UTF8 | philosophy | gpadmin | UTF8 | postgres | gpadmin | UTF8 | template0 | gpadmin | UTF8 | =c/gpadmin : gpadmin=CTc/gpadmin template1 | gpadmin | UTF8 | =c/gpadmin : gpadmin=CTc/gpadmin It would be easy enough to create a new database with a different encoding - only one record in the one in question. However, it sounded as though you don't believe that is the issue - that UTF8 ought to support the German characters I want. Am I understanding you correctly? Hagen -----Original Message----- From: Hannes Erven [mailto:hannes@xxxxxxxx] Sent: Monday, January 02, 2012 1:53 PM To: pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: finhagen@xxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Adding German Character Set to PostgresSQL Hagen, > gpdemo=# \encoding > UTF8 UTF8 includes virtually all characters you will need for any purpose on the earth. But: you showed the output of \encoding when you were asked to show \l . There is a subtle difference: \encoding shows the encoding of the connection between psql and the server; while \l shows the encoding the database server will actually store the data in. While the first can easily be changed for a session, the latter can only be set when creating a database (or a cluster). -hannes -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general