databases/tables with nonconventional names
Disclaimer : not a user of phpmyadmin

You may have to check the following


see what character set phpmyadmin operates in
see what character set mysqld operates in
see what character set remote database servers operates in


Find out if you can manually change the default character set before connecting to the the desired DB server

If you connect to a remote DB using mysql client program and the characters for DB names look normal, then you are just dealing with character set issues with phpmyadmin.

WIth regard to the error message, do not surround database names with single quotes ('). Instead, surround them with back quotes (`)