Searching And Finding The Information Users Really Want To Find

Hi,

Imagine that I have a select something like this

select * from T where T.Name Like '%Maria%'

"Maria" would be what the user what to find. But for example in spanish we use í, ó, ú, ü... The same happens in french, german...

The user want to find Maria and does not care if another user (or himself) has inserted the client as Maria, María, Marïa or whatever.

Of course one solution is putting in the DB only the simple characters (a,e,i,o,u) and look for  these, replacing the "strange" chars  in the application to the "normal" ones. But if we want to be professionals we would need to insert in the DB the name in their original spelling (the image is the most important!)

Any idea, help or reference?

Thx in advance and happy new year.

David