diff --git a/cassandra/metadata.py b/cassandra/metadata.py
index f7337d87..18ac50c6 100644
--- a/cassandra/metadata.py
+++ b/cassandra/metadata.py
@@ -1218,14 +1218,8 @@ class TableMetadata(object):
         return list(sorted(ret))
 
 
-if six.PY3:
-    def protect_name(name):
-        return maybe_escape_name(name)
-else:
-    def protect_name(name):  # NOQA
-        if isinstance(name, six.text_type):
-            name = name.encode('utf8')
-        return maybe_escape_name(name)
+def protect_name(name):
+    return maybe_escape_name(name)
 
 
 def protect_names(names):
@@ -2466,6 +2460,7 @@ def get_schema_parser(connection, server_version, timeout):
         # multi-version parser we have as of C* 2.2.0rc1.
         return SchemaParserV22(connection, timeout)
 
+
 def _cql_from_cass_type(cass_type):
     """
     A string representation of the type for this column, such as "varchar"