“RICHAF”: These are Ontario’s rejected licence plates in 2023

Rockin’ a cool new whip and want your licence plate to pair nicely with it? Maybe you have a cool nickname and want everyone on the road to see it? If you’ve let your creative wings fly only to get rejected by the provincial government, you’re not alone. The provincial government is pretty picky with what can go on your plate before you hit the road, for good reason in many of these cases. They’ve shared a list of rejected Personalized Licence Plates in Ontario in 2023, with us, and let’s just say, “everybody is so creative.”

The Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery is in charge of personalized licence plate applications. They have the final say as to what can and cannot go on an Ontario license plate and in 2023, the ministry rejected thousands of PLPs.

Though many were rejected for obscenity and clarity, if the plate has already been issued, those get rejected as well. Sometimes creativity will only take you so far, you need to be unique!

And the rejects go on and on and on – for 56 pages to be exact. According to the ministry, there may be PLPs that were ordered between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023, still pending review so this may well be much longer than we think.

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“PLPs may undergo a second review as a result of a request for reconsideration,” shared the ministry. “As such, any of the licence plates in the attached list may be approved in the future.”

A list of PLPs was shared with Curiocity, courtesy of the ministry, and some of these make us shake our heads.

“BICHOTAS”, “FNLEGEND”, “GOSUCKIT”, and “MELAPELA” are just some of the thousands rejected. And let’s be real, did we REALLY think these would be approved? Come on.

And someone also tried to get away with “CHOOCH33” in 2023, compared to 2022’s “COOCHIE” and it did not get approved. It’s the effort that counts.

Before we dive right in, it’s important to note that PLP applications will also be rejected if the letters/number combinations are found to be “objectionable” under certain criteria:

• Sexual references
• Abusive, obscene language and derogatory slang
• Religion
• Drugs/alcohol
• Political figures, dignitaries/law enforcement officials
• Violence/criminal activity
• Human rights discrimination
• Clarity (interchangeable letters/numbers are not allowed) and readability for law enforcement officials
• Any combination of graphics and characters that together could be determined to be objectionable under the above criteria or violate the contract with a graphic partner
• Intellectual property (such as trademarks)

Since the list is a long one, here are a few of the rejected license plates below:

Though the ministry did say some of these could go get a second look, we’re pretty sure “BIGBAWDY” and “OMYTFYM” are not.