I pondered for a while… Is μ or Ω really a Greek letter? Wait a second before you object. If I try the following: sqlite> select 'Ω' regexp '\p{Latin}'; 1 sqlite> So the PCRE library considers this to be a letter not belonging to the Greek alphabet. Or is something else going on? The syntax is \p{unicode property or \p{unicode script} The property option I normally use for, for example, searching for a symbol like \p{S} or \p{Sm} if you only want to test for mathematical symbols. So let's try this: sqlite> select 'Ω' regexp '\p{S}'; 1 sqlite> I was lucky. Because all other Greek letters are probably not a symbol. sqlite> select '≤' regexp '\p{S}'; 1 sqlite> Which is indeed a symbol. I've never used or seen a colleague using /p{Greek} or /p{Latin}. What I've seen is using /p to do some freaky complex searching like, for example, \p{lu} search for an uppercase letter that has a lower case variant.