diff --git a/base/strings/basic.jl b/base/strings/basic.jl
index df3e4bdf6db81..e31b2218de920 100644
--- a/base/strings/basic.jl
+++ b/base/strings/basic.jl
@@ -394,6 +394,8 @@ lowercase(s::AbstractString) = map(lowercase, s)
     titlecase(s::AbstractString)
 
 Capitalizes the first character of each word in `s`.
+See also [`ucfirst`](@ref) to capitalize only the first
+character in `s`.
 
 ```jldoctest
 julia> titlecase("the julia programming language")
@@ -418,7 +420,10 @@ end
 """
     ucfirst(s::AbstractString)
 
-Returns `string` with the first character converted to uppercase.
+Returns `string` with the first character converted to uppercase
+(technically "title case" for Unicode).
+See also [`titlecase`](@ref) to capitalize the first character of
+every word in `s`.
 
 ```jldoctest
 julia> ucfirst("python")
@@ -426,7 +431,10 @@ julia> ucfirst("python")
 ```
 """
 function ucfirst(s::AbstractString)
-    isempty(s) || isupper(s[1]) ? s : string(uppercase(s[1]),s[nextind(s,1):end])
+    isempty(s) && return s
+    c = s[1]
+    tc = titlecase(c)
+    return c==tc ? s : string(tc,s[nextind(s,1):end])
 end
 
 """
diff --git a/test/strings/basic.jl b/test/strings/basic.jl
index b45b6757d80af..4c155f92b1b27 100644
--- a/test/strings/basic.jl
+++ b/test/strings/basic.jl
@@ -151,6 +151,7 @@ end
 @test ucfirst("hola")=="Hola"
 @test ucfirst("")==""
 @test ucfirst("*")=="*"
+@test ucfirst("DŽxx") == ucfirst("džxx") == "Džxx"
 
 @test lcfirst("Hola")=="hola"
 @test lcfirst("hola")=="hola"