diff --git a/doc_src/language.rst b/doc_src/language.rst
index 68446caa9..64e45aab8 100644
--- a/doc_src/language.rst
+++ b/doc_src/language.rst
@@ -1409,6 +1409,7 @@ The locale variables are: ``LANG``, ``LC_ALL``, ``LC_COLLATE``, ``LC_CTYPE``, ``
 
 The most common way to set the locale to use a command like ``set -gx LANG en_GB.utf8``, which sets the current locale to be the English language, as used in Great Britain, using the UTF-8 character set. That way any program that requires one setting differently can easily override just that and doesn't have to resort to LC_ALL. For a list of available locales on your system, try ``locale -a``.
 
+Because it needs to handle output that might include multibyte characters (like e.g. emojis), fish will try to set its own internal LC_CTYPE to one that is UTF8-capable even if given an effective LC_CTYPE of "C" (the default). This prevents issues with e.g. filenames given in autosuggestions even if the user started fish with LC_ALL=C. To turn this handling off, set ``fish_allow_singlebyte_locale`` to "1".
 
 .. _builtin-overview:
 
diff --git a/src/env_dispatch.cpp b/src/env_dispatch.cpp
index d7e150682..b8bf6fea2 100644
--- a/src/env_dispatch.cpp
+++ b/src/env_dispatch.cpp
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ static const wcstring locale_variables[] = {
     L"LANG",     L"LANGUAGE",          L"LC_ALL",         L"LC_ADDRESS",   L"LC_COLLATE",
     L"LC_CTYPE", L"LC_IDENTIFICATION", L"LC_MEASUREMENT", L"LC_MESSAGES",  L"LC_MONETARY",
     L"LC_NAME",  L"LC_NUMERIC",        L"LC_PAPER",       L"LC_TELEPHONE", L"LC_TIME",
-    L"LOCPATH"};
+    L"fish_allow_singlebyte_locale", L"LOCPATH"};
 
 /// List of all curses environment variable names that might trigger (re)initializing the curses
 /// subsystem.
@@ -556,6 +556,15 @@ static void init_curses(const environment_t &vars) {
     curses_initialized = true;
 }
 
+static const char *utf8_locales[] = {
+    "C.UTF-8",
+    "en_US.UTF-8",
+    "en_GB.UTF-8",
+    "de_DE.UTF-8",
+    "C.utf8",
+    "UTF-8",
+};
+
 /// Initialize the locale subsystem.
 static void init_locale(const environment_t &vars) {
     // We have to make a copy because the subsequent setlocale() call to change the locale will
@@ -576,6 +585,28 @@ static void init_locale(const environment_t &vars) {
     }
 
     char *locale = setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
+
+    // Try to get a multibyte-capable encoding
+    // A "C" locale is broken for our purposes - any wchar functions will break on it.
+    // So we try *really really really hard* to not have one.
+    bool fix_locale = true;
+    if (auto allow_c = vars.get(L"fish_allow_singlebyte_locale")) {
+        fix_locale = allow_c.missing_or_empty() ? true : !bool_from_string(allow_c->as_string());
+    }
+    if (fix_locale && MB_CUR_MAX == 1) {
+        FLOGF(env_locale, L"Have singlebyte locale, trying to fix");
+        for (auto loc : utf8_locales) {
+            setlocale(LC_CTYPE, loc);
+            if (MB_CUR_MAX > 1) {
+                FLOGF(env_locale, L"Fixed locale: '%s'", loc);
+                break;
+            }
+        }
+        if (MB_CUR_MAX == 1) {
+            FLOGF(env_locale, L"Failed to fix locale");
+        }
+    }
+
     fish_setlocale();
     FLOGF(env_locale, L"init_locale() setlocale(): '%s'", locale);
 
diff --git a/tests/checks/locale.fish b/tests/checks/locale.fish
index 01aff36b6..e23fc23f3 100644
--- a/tests/checks/locale.fish
+++ b/tests/checks/locale.fish
@@ -3,6 +3,9 @@
 # see #7934.
 #REQUIRES: test -z "$GITHUB_WORKFLOW"
 
+# We typically try to force a utf8-capable locale,
+# this turns that off.
+set -gx fish_allow_singlebyte_locale 1
 
 # A function to display bytes, necessary because GNU and BSD implementations of `od` have different output.
 # We used to use xxd, but it's not available everywhere. See #3797.