BUG: StataWriterUTF8 removing some valid characters in column names (#47276)

doc/source/whatsnew/v1.5.0.rst

@@ -845,6 +845,7 @@ I/O
 - :meth:`to_html` now excludes the ``border`` attribute from ``<table>`` elements when ``border`` keyword is set to ``False``.
 - Bug in :func:`read_sas` returned ``None`` rather than an empty DataFrame for SAS7BDAT files with zero rows (:issue:`18198`)
 - Bug in :class:`StataWriter` where value labels were always written with default encoding (:issue:`46750`)
+- Bug in :class:`StataWriterUTF8` where some valid characters were removed from variable names (:issue:`47276`)
 
 Period
 ^^^^^^

pandas/io/stata.py

@@ -3646,12 +3646,16 @@ def _validate_variable_name(self, name: str) -> str:
         # High code points appear to be acceptable
         for c in name:
             if (
-                ord(c) < 128
-                and (c < "A" or c > "Z")
-                and (c < "a" or c > "z")
-                and (c < "0" or c > "9")
-                and c != "_"
-            ) or 128 <= ord(c) < 256:
+                (
+                    ord(c) < 128
+                    and (c < "A" or c > "Z")
+                    and (c < "a" or c > "z")
+                    and (c < "0" or c > "9")
+                    and c != "_"
+                )
+                or 128 <= ord(c) < 192
+                or c in {"×", "÷"}
+            ):
                 name = name.replace(c, "_")
 
         return name

pandas/tests/io/test_stata.py

@@ -1786,11 +1786,11 @@ def test_utf8_writer(self, version):
                 [2.0, 2, "ᴮ", ""],
                 [3.0, 3, "ᴰ", None],
             ],
-            columns=["a", "β", "ĉ", "strls"],
+            columns=["Å", "β", "ĉ", "strls"],
         )
         data["ᴐᴬᵀ"] = cat
         variable_labels = {
-            "a": "apple",
+            "Å": "apple",
             "β": "ᵈᵉᵊ",
             "ĉ": "ᴎტჄႲႳႴႶႺ",
             "strls": "Long Strings",