diff --git a/src/root/usr/share/container-scripts/postgresql/README.md b/src/root/usr/share/container-scripts/postgresql/README.md
index bc01aa9f..cbe05ebb 100644
--- a/src/root/usr/share/container-scripts/postgresql/README.md
+++ b/src/root/usr/share/container-scripts/postgresql/README.md
@@ -74,6 +74,13 @@ initialization by passing `-e VAR=VALUE` to the Docker run command.
 **`POSTGRESQL_ADMIN_PASSWORD`**  
        Password for the `postgres` admin account (optional)
 
+The following environment variables are optional, and only used when the database is initialzed
+
+**`POSTGRESQL_ENCODING`**
+	Database encoding. Default to UTF-8
+
+**`POSTGRESQL_LOCALE`**
+	Database locale. Default to en_EN
 
 Alternatively, the following options are related to migration scenario:
 
diff --git a/src/root/usr/share/container-scripts/postgresql/common.sh b/src/root/usr/share/container-scripts/postgresql/common.sh
index a8592ffe..6299b512 100644
--- a/src/root/usr/share/container-scripts/postgresql/common.sh
+++ b/src/root/usr/share/container-scripts/postgresql/common.sh
@@ -223,7 +223,15 @@ EOF
 function create_users() {
   if [[ ",$postinitdb_actions," = *,simple_db,* ]]; then
     createuser "$POSTGRESQL_USER"
-    createdb --owner="$POSTGRESQL_USER" "$POSTGRESQL_DATABASE"
+    EXTRA_ARGS=""
+    if [ -v POSTGRESQL_ENCODING ]; then
+	EXTRA_ARGS="$EXTRA_ARGS -E $POSTGRESQL_ENCODING"
+    fi
+    if [ -v POSTGRESQL_LOCALE ]; then
+	EXTRA_ARGS="$EXTRA_ARGS -l $POSTGRESQL_LOCALE"
+    fi
+
+    createdb $EXTRA_ARGS --owner="$POSTGRESQL_USER" "$POSTGRESQL_DATABASE"
   fi
 
   if [ -v POSTGRESQL_MASTER_USER ]; then