diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 957978149b..72d6a1f78f 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -156,6 +156,7 @@ Merged from 3.0:
  * Correct log message for statistics of offheap memtable flush (CASSANDRA-12776)
  * Explicitly set locale for string validation (CASSANDRA-12541,CASSANDRA-12542,CASSANDRA-12543,CASSANDRA-12545)
 Merged from 2.2:
+ * cqlsh: fix DESC TYPES errors (CASSANDRA-12914)
  * Fix leak on skipped SSTables in sstableupgrade (CASSANDRA-12899)
  * Avoid blocking gossip during pending range calculation (CASSANDRA-12281)
  * Fix purgeability of tombstones with max timestamp (CASSANDRA-12792)
diff --git a/bin/cqlsh.py b/bin/cqlsh.py
index 0358c83232..2387342f5d 100644
--- a/bin/cqlsh.py
+++ b/bin/cqlsh.py
@@ -1318,12 +1318,10 @@ class Shell(cmd.Cmd):
                 name = protect_name(ksmeta.name)
                 print 'Keyspace %s' % (name,)
                 print '---------%s' % ('-' * len(name))
-                cmd.Cmd.columnize(self, protect_names(ksmeta.functions.keys()))
-                print
+                self._columnize_unicode(ksmeta.functions.keys())
         else:
             ksmeta = self.get_keyspace_meta(ksname)
-            cmd.Cmd.columnize(self, protect_names(ksmeta.functions.keys()))
-            print
+            self._columnize_unicode(ksmeta.functions.keys())
 
     def describe_function(self, ksname, functionname):
         if ksname is None:
@@ -1345,12 +1343,10 @@ class Shell(cmd.Cmd):
                 name = protect_name(ksmeta.name)
                 print 'Keyspace %s' % (name,)
                 print '---------%s' % ('-' * len(name))
-                cmd.Cmd.columnize(self, protect_names(ksmeta.aggregates.keys()))
-                print
+                self._columnize_unicode(ksmeta.aggregates.keys())
         else:
             ksmeta = self.get_keyspace_meta(ksname)
-            cmd.Cmd.columnize(self, protect_names(ksmeta.aggregates.keys()))
-            print
+            self._columnize_unicode(ksmeta.aggregates.keys())
 
     def describe_aggregate(self, ksname, aggregatename):
         if ksname is None:
@@ -1372,12 +1368,10 @@ class Shell(cmd.Cmd):
                 name = protect_name(ksmeta.name)
                 print 'Keyspace %s' % (name,)
                 print '---------%s' % ('-' * len(name))
-                cmd.Cmd.columnize(self, protect_names(ksmeta.user_types.keys()))
-                print
+                self._columnize_unicode(ksmeta.user_types.keys(), quote=True)
         else:
             ksmeta = self.get_keyspace_meta(ksname)
-            cmd.Cmd.columnize(self, protect_names(ksmeta.user_types.keys()))
-            print
+            self._columnize_unicode(ksmeta.user_types.keys(), quote=True)
 
     def describe_usertype(self, ksname, typename):
         if ksname is None:
@@ -1392,6 +1386,16 @@ class Shell(cmd.Cmd):
             raise UserTypeNotFound("User type %r not found" % typename)
         print usertype.export_as_string()
 
+    def _columnize_unicode(self, name_list, quote=False):
+        """
+        Used when columnizing identifiers that may contain unicode
+        """
+        names = [n.encode('utf-8') for n in name_list]
+        if quote:
+            names = protect_names(names)
+        cmd.Cmd.columnize(self, names)
+        print
+
     def describe_cluster(self):
         print '\nCluster: %s' % self.get_cluster_name()
         p = trim_if_present(self.get_partitioner(), 'org.apache.cassandra.dht.')