A nifty article in the Toronto Star includes a link to a sortable list of disallowed plates. Most of the ones disallowed seem rather …innocuous. I have to wonder though… how far do they search before they give up? Surely they can’t be searching all 6000 languages on earth to disallow the equivalent of, say, ‘fuck’?
Ha, I wonder whether the person who wanted ‘Rood Boy’ (reson of rejection: Religion) knew that rood means cross, or whether they just thought Rude Boy was taken, and were going for an alternative spelling.
I think I’ll be calling Jesus Rood Boy from now on. If I don’t post anything in a month, assume I’ve been smote.
“6R” (#3243) rejected for clarity and readability reasons. That’s pretty far-fetched. I can read it just fine.
I’ve been going through the list a bit, and there are definitely a few head-scratchers. Let’s see…[ul]
[li]#456, “BELOKULO”, is Esperanto for “beautiful eye”.[/li][li]There are a whole bunch of plates with the classification of rejection listed as “To Be Determined”. [/li][li]It seems that the Ministry doesn’t like letters being repeated more than around 3 times. [/li][li]It also seems that the Ministry doesn’t like using Q in place of O.[/li][li]#74, “69SHLBY”, is a year and make of car, not something sexual. Even I know that.[/li][li]#440, “REDNEK67”. Disallowed because of “Human Rights Discrimination”? That doesn’t even make sense! [/li][li]#189, “NIHILIST”. This is a religious term? Philosophical, maybe. But religious?[/li][*]#239, “VAFAKULO” looks like another Esperanto one, but doesn’t actually make sense in Esperanto. I suspect it’s an effort to cram vafanculo onto the plate, in which case the ban makes sense.[/ul]
Well, I can’t speak to the rest, but the first could be read as Bello Culo, or nice ass.
I agree that #239 is probably ‘Va Fanculo’.
What I would do is keep the current vetting program and add one where two 14 year old boys read the entries. Anything that made them giggle would be off the table.
That actually makes sense, for readability reasons.