Personalised car number plates; also known as vanity number plates, prestige number plates, cherished number plates, custom number plates or private number plates, are legal car number plates that combine a series of letters and / or numbers to denote something more meaningful (usually the owner’s initials) than those issued by the state.

In the United Kingdom, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is the government body responsible for the issuing of car number plates, as well as monitoring driving licences, road traffic offences and road taxation. The DVLA allows a set of personalised number plates to be used as it sells such number plates itself, as well as regulating those that are bought and sold privately.

Personalised number plates commonly spell out a person’s name or place of residence. In the UK, the official registration system stipulates the use of a number following any three consecutive letters. What this means is that personalised number plates are often highly creative, with a number often used to stand for a letter. An example is the use of the number 3 for the letter E.

Personalised number plates can be bought in advance of a car being bought, as well as afterwards. Replacing a state issued number plate with a private alternative is, with some exceptions, straightforwardly an issue of paying for the alternative. Those refused are when that number plate is already in use, or is common with very widely used names such as ‘John’ or ‘Mary’, or in the case where the index mark creates a swear word.