utf8 enables not only Unicode string constants, but also Unicode identifiers (variables, methods, subroutines, …).
If you use Unicode only in String constants (and only occasionally), then it is even possible to stay in ASCII and use
charnames'
\N{CHARNAME} sequences, so that e.g.
my $default_name = '\N{LATIN CAPITAL LETTER AE WITH MACRON}sop';
would be equivalent to your example. With Perl v5.16 or later, you don't even need to explicitly use charnames for these sequences.
This approach also avoids problems with several (mostly web) frontends of git (or other) repositories that don't handle Unicode well.
