Select LIKE not working on XAMPP with MariaDB

I cannot get "LIKE %M" to work on XAMPP with MariaDB.

$sql = "SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE names LIKE 'm%' ORDER by names ASC";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $sql) or die("Error in selecting " . 
mysqli_error($connection));

$emparray = array();
while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result))
{
    $emparray[] = $row;
}
echo json_encode($emparray);

this returns a blank screen, no errors or anything.

but if i switch to something like this

$sql = "SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE names = 'SomeName' ORDER by names ASC";

it runs just fine, so I know its not a problem connecting to the DB. And I have researched through this site for the answer first, so I am pretty confident that my code is correct.

just not sure if this is a problem with XAMPP and/or MariaDB, or if I just missed something stupid.

Thanks in advance, any advice would be appreciated.