Latest Emacs 24.0.50 users, If you use smtpmail to send messages, currently you may want to have this workaround: (setq rfc2047-encode-encoded-words nil) Or recipients cannot read non-ASCII text you write in the message header (To, Cc, Subject...). See also bug#8731: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2011-05/msg00580.html