GeoNames Forum

Hey,I have read some articles in Geonames forums and imported all geonames tables into "SQL Server 2008".During that process i have converted all the files into "UTF 16" then imported into my Geonames table sucessfully.
The issue am facing is the special characters in "NAME" column where i implemented search functionality.When User searching a city which has starts with special characters then result is not showing up the cities with special characters.

E.g:--the geoid for city "Asansol" is 8439884 and geoid for "Āsansol" is 1278314.When user enters "A" then final result not showing "Āsansol" since it is starting with special character.

FYI. my SQL collation is "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS".

Can some one tell me how to resolve this?

Thanks in advance.