As @crinrict says, it wouldn't make sense if it worked for last names but not for first names. Also, the TS4 team really looked into Polynesian cultures and languages to not mess things up, so I'm pretty sure that they know that they should use apostrophes, not accents. (Sulani is based on Polynesian cultures.)
Anyway, I tried it with both acute accent (´) and grave accent (`) in the cheat code, just to make sure, and the cheat returns "Sim not found" if I write Paka´a Uha or Paka`a Uha, and the symbol in CAS really looks like an apostrophe anyway.
@SqueamishNerdCopy and pasting it direct from the game you get:
Paka’a Uha
And apparently that isn't a grave or an accute or an apostrophe. In fact, I can't identify what symbol that is they used. But in the case of Nalani they did use a standard apostrohpe in her last name.
Your solution is to either copy paste the name whenever you want to use a cheat or go into CAS and rename Paka’a Uha to use a standard apostrophe.
It's not a bug, it's just they are just using a symbol there that isn't on my keyboard, which they could have copy pasted from a polynesian cultures naming site.
Edit: I think it's a single quote mark (alt+0146).
@simvasionInteresting! It's an ’okina, a symbol used in Polynesian languages, and it's usually transcribed into an apostrophe, that's why I thought they had used apostrophes. I didn't even know that ’okina existed as a digital symbol, I thought they where always transcribed into apostrophes.
Very odd though that they seem to have used ’okina for first names and apostrophes for last names. It may be, as you mentioned earlier, that different people in the TS4 team use different symbols. They should change it (for new save files) in a patch! Even though it's nice that they've actually used ’okina we get trouble when cheating, since most people don't have ’okina on their keyboard, so I think it would make sense to change all ’okina into apostrophes.
Edit: You're right, it's a single quote mark. I found on Wikipedia that ’okina is written with single quote mark when written digitally.
Edit 2: The Wikipedia article also says that ’okina is transcribed with either single quote mark, apostrophe, or grave accent, when used in Hawaiian. When it's used in Samoan it's always transcribed by an apostrophe.
Just ran into this trying to change a relationship for Kalamainu’u Iona. She had full Friendship and Romance bars with a character I'm playing but the relationship was Acquaintance/Best Friend/Spouse. I wanted to change that to Soulmate for the Soulmate aspiration.
I tried the relationship cheats with Kalamainu'u Iona (the apostrophe) and they didn't work, so this issue is still a problem. I was able to fix it by copying the ' character from Paka’a's name in the post by @simvasion .
I then used the Alt-0146 character in sims.get_sim_id_by_name Kalamainu’u Iona and I can confirm that the Alt-code also works.
