wrong sorting order with UTF-8

[spekt]

I have my table and rows set to utf8_general_ci but they are encoded so special characters like "é" becomes "é" so if I try to sort it alphabetically with an ORDER BY clause, the order is wrong (it is sorted with its encoded value rather than its actual character).

should be:

Bob
Émilie
John

but comes out as:

Émilie
Bob
John

[Old Pedant]

Seems like wrong encoding, rather than wrong sorting.

If you are indeed using UTF8, then characters shouldn't *look* encoded.

And by the by, what is a "row" in a database??? As in (your quote) "I have my tables and rows..."

[spekt]

I meant fields sorry, anyway how would I fix this? I use phpMyAdmin and I see The characters endoded. Is it configured wrong? Like I said I use utf8_general_ci for the table and the fields

[Old Pedant]

No idea at all if phpMyAdmin is capable of properly inserting unicode/utf-8 characters.

Have only used it a couple of times. I tend to use Java-based tools and avoid PHP, since I don't code in PHP.