title: MySQL column name is a weird character - how do I change it?
body: <p>I'm examining a table in MySQL that has a weird column name. I want to change the name of the column to not be weird. I can't figure out how to do so.</p>
  
  <p>Firstly, if I first do</p>
  
  <pre><code>SET NAMES utf8;
  DESC `tblName`;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get</p>
  
  <pre><code>| Ԫ                           | varchar(255)  | YES  | MUL | NULL    |                |
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Instead, doing</p>
  
  <pre><code>SET NAMES latin1;
  DESC `tblName`;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Results in</p>
  
  <pre><code>| ?                           | varchar(255)  | YES  | MUL | NULL    |                |
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Fair enough - this make me think the column name is simply a latin1 question mark. But this statement doesn't work:</p>
  
  <pre><code>mysql&gt; ALTER TABLE `tblName` CHANGE COLUMN `?` `newName` VARCHAR(255);
  ERROR 1054 (42S22): Unknown column '?' in 'tblName'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So I went to the information_schema table for some info:</p>
  
  <pre><code>mysql&gt; SELECT column_name, HEX(column_name), ordinal_position FROM information_schema.columns WHERE table_schema = 'myschema' AND table_name = 'tblName' ;
  | ?                           | D4AA                                                   |               48 |
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I looked up this hex point, and assuming I looked it up correctly (which may not be true), I determined this character is "풪" which is the "hangul syllable pweoj". So I tried that in an alter table statement to no avail:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ALTER TABLE `tblName` change column `풪` `newName` VARCHAR(255);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So that's where I'm stuck.</p>