Want a list utf8 formatted but bytestrings found

[snippsat]

Still i cannot understand WHY it reads the database names like that, instead of their normal Greek names.

Is it you have put data into DB,or it is an exiting DB?
MySQL i think store as latin-1 default,if not doing anything like charset='utf8mb4'.
Yes MySQL has own stupid encoding utf8mb4 to have proper utf8 support.
Look at SO and utf8 data on latin1 tables.
I do not use MySQL if have choice,always PostgreSQL or SQLite for simpler stuff.

Raw output of names is:

The it should not be a problem in you running Python 3,as done a couple of times in this post.
Put in this in script:

import sys

print(sys.executable)

Python 3.7:

items = ['Alexander Lepsveridze', 'John Comeau', '\xce\x86\xce\xba\xce\xb7\xcf\x82 \xce\xa4\xcf\x83\xce\xb9\xce\xac\xce\xbc\xce\xb7\xcf\x82', '\xce\x8c\xce\xbc\xce\xb9\xce\xbb\xce\xbf\xcf\x82 \xce\xa4\xcf\x83\xce\xbf\xcf\x84\xcf\x85\xce\xbb\xce\xaf\xce\xbf\xcf\x85']
names = [s.encode('latin1').decode('utf8') for s in items]
print(names)

Output:
λ python uni1.py
C:\python37\python.exe
['Alexander Lepsveridze', 'John Comeau', 'Άκης Τσιάμης', 'Όμιλος Τσοτυλίου']

Running same code in Python 2.7,and it fails.

λ py -2.7 uni1.py
C:\Python27\python.exe
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "uni1.py", line 7, in <module>
    names = [s.encode('latin1').decode('utf8') for s in items]
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xce in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)

Fix so it also work in Python 2.7.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import sys

print(sys.executable)
items = ['Alexander Lepsveridze', 'John Comeau', '\xce\x86\xce\xba\xce\xb7\xcf\x82 \xce\xa4\xcf\x83\xce\xb9\xce\xac\xce\xbc\xce\xb7\xcf\x82', '\xce\x8c\xce\xbc\xce\xb9\xce\xbb\xce\xbf\xcf\x82 \xce\xa4\xcf\x83\xce\xbf\xcf\x84\xcf\x85\xce\xbb\xce\xaf\xce\xbf\xcf\x85']
names = [s.decode('utf8') for s in items]
print(names)
for name in names:
    print(name)

Output:
py -2.7 uni1.py
C:\Python27\python.exe
[u'Alexander Lepsveridze', u'John Comeau', u'\u0386\u03ba\u03b7\u03c2 \u03a4\u03c3\u03b9\u03ac\u03bc\u03b7\u03c2', u'\u038c\u03bc\u03b9\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \u03a4\u03c3\u03bf\u03c4\u03c5\u03bb\u03af\u03bf\u03c5']
Alexander Lepsveridze
John Comeau
Άκης Τσιάμης
Όμιλος Τσοτυλίου