Taking merlyn's advice into account, I'll change my answer;-)

--from above--

Don't forget about the Schwartzian Transform:

my %hash = qw/John 1 Bob 1 xavier 1 alice 1/;

my @keys = map { (my $x = $_) =~ tr/a-zA-Z/A-Za-z/; $x }
           sort
           map { (my $x = $_) =~ tr/a-zA-Z/A-Za-z/; $x }
           keys %hash;

print "@keys\n";
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Will give you

alice xavier Bob John
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