diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index a8e7d9e..17e75d5 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -6,10 +6,13 @@ The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/).
 
 ## [Unreleased]
 
-### Fixes
+### Fixed
 
+- `TypeError` in encodingdb.py when name of unicode is not
+  str ([#733](https://github.com/pdfminer/pdfminer.six/pull/733))
 - `TypeError` in HTMLConverter when using a bytes fontname ([#734](https://github.com/pdfminer/pdfminer.six/pull/734))
 
+
 ## [20220319]
 
 ### Added
diff --git a/pdfminer/encodingdb.py b/pdfminer/encodingdb.py
index b8ec731..c7edac5 100644
--- a/pdfminer/encodingdb.py
+++ b/pdfminer/encodingdb.py
@@ -25,6 +25,12 @@ def name2unicode(name: str) -> str:
     :returns unicode character if name resembles something,
     otherwise a KeyError
     """
+    if not isinstance(name, str):
+        raise KeyError(
+            'Could not convert unicode name "%s" to character because '
+            "it should be of type str but is of type %s" % (name, type(name))
+        )
+
     name = name.split(".")[0]
     components = name.split("_")