For every “No 1 Mom” you see on the back of a family station wagon, there’s a “BOOBZ” vanity plate (or a couple hundred) that never see the light of the day. The Ohio BMV (with some help from the ACLU) are tasked with keeping vulgarities and racial slurs and all other manners of linguistic no-nos off the roads. 

The Special Plates Review Committee, a seven-member board that includes folks from high up on the BMV chain as well as customer service associates, takes a look at each submission and, sometimes with the help of the internet, decides if it’s suitable for public road consumption. A lot of times they don’t even need the internet — there’s a database with previously rejected plates and word combinations that is continually updated.

They get ton of requests they reject, and because it’s a government thing, it’s a public record, which means it’s fun every once in awhile to dial them up and get the latest and not so greatest from the reject pile. Below, the 700+ from 2014—2016. Enjoy.

Thanks to WCMH NBC 4 for putting up the list (which does contain plenty of potentially offensive words or suggestions.)

Denied Plates 2014 2016


This article appears in Feb 17-23, 2016.

Vince Grzegorek has been with Scene since 2007 and editor-in-chief since 2012. He previously worked at Discount Drug Mart and Texas Roadhouse.

One reply on “Here Are the 700+ Vanity License Plates the BMV Has Rejected in the Past Two Years”

  1. OHIO magazine printed a similar list in the Nineties…and the PD had one in the Oughts…both of them were a LOT shorter. Do all these shmucks REALLY think some of this crap will fly? Ohioans appear to have gotten a LOT more stupid over the last 20 years.

    Of course, even back then, anything with H8…such as H8 MICH…was not allowed. Neither was anything with FAN (OSU FAN, for instance) acceptable. The reason? FAN meant fanny, as in ass. I am not making that last excuse up.

    But there were also plenty of blue-and-white (The Heart Of It All) non-vanity plates that began with KIK and KYK. Go figure.

    Perhaps the censors have just “wisened up” a bit…and have become smarter (and more savvy) as the population got dumber…hence the 700 names instead of a mere 200 or so.

    Or maybe the censors now include a couple of members of the Hebrew persuasion…that “other” Tribe.

    Chuckles the Clown

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