title: Pandas dataframe and character encoding when reading excel file
body: <p>I am reading an excel file that has several numerical and categorical data. The columns name_string contains characters in a foreign language. 
  When I try to see the content of the name_string column, I get the results I want, but the foreign characters (that are displayed correctly in the excel spreadsheet) are displayed with the wrong encoding.
  Here is what I have:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import pandas as pd
  df = pd.read_excel('MC_simulation.xlsx', 'DataSet', encoding='utf-8')
  name_string = df.name_string.unique()
  name_string.sort()
  name_string
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Producing the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>array([u'4th of July', u'911', u'Abab', u'Abass', u'Abcar', u'Abced',
         u'Ceded', u'Cedes', u'Cedfus', u'Ceding', u'Cedtim', u'Cedtol',
         u'Cedxer', u'Chevrolet Corvette', u'Chuck Norris',
         u'Cristina Fern\xe1ndez de Kirchner'], dtype=object)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In the last line, the correctly encoded name should be Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Can anybody help me with this issue? </p>