diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index ab662cbc7a5..21e5e3c5e8d 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -31,6 +31,9 @@ Core and Builtins
 Library
 -------
 
+- Issue #8394: _ctypes.dlopen() accepts bytes, bytearray and str with
+  surrogates.
+
 - Issue #7606: XML-RPC traceback stored in X-traceback is now encoded to ASCII
   using backslashreplace error handler
 
diff --git a/Modules/_ctypes/callproc.c b/Modules/_ctypes/callproc.c
index 2a75fb10848..022cceb4c32 100644
--- a/Modules/_ctypes/callproc.c
+++ b/Modules/_ctypes/callproc.c
@@ -1371,7 +1371,8 @@ copy_com_pointer(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
 
 static PyObject *py_dl_open(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
 {
-	char *name;
+	PyObject *name, *name2;
+	char *name_str;
 	void * handle;
 #ifdef RTLD_LOCAL	
 	int mode = RTLD_NOW | RTLD_LOCAL;
@@ -1379,10 +1380,22 @@ static PyObject *py_dl_open(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
 	/* cygwin doesn't define RTLD_LOCAL */
 	int mode = RTLD_NOW;
 #endif
-	if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "z|i:dlopen", &name, &mode))
+	if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "O|i:dlopen", &name, &mode))
 		return NULL;
 	mode |= RTLD_NOW;
-	handle = ctypes_dlopen(name, mode);
+	if (name != Py_None) {
+		if (PyUnicode_FSConverter(name, &name2) == 0)
+			return NULL;
+		if (PyBytes_Check(name2))
+			name_str = PyBytes_AS_STRING(name2);
+		else
+			name_str = PyByteArray_AS_STRING(name2);
+	} else {
+		name_str = NULL;
+		name2 = NULL;
+	}
+	handle = ctypes_dlopen(name_str, mode);
+	Py_XDECREF(name2);
 	if (!handle) {
 		char *errmsg = ctypes_dlerror();
 		if (!errmsg)