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Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, Americans have an almost intrinsically hardwired need to personalize their vehicles in every conceivable way possible. Just look at the cultural obsession with dashboard hula girls and fuzzy dice hung from rearview mirrors. America was built around and centrally focused on motor vehicles since the turn of the 20th century. Detroit was the birthplace and epicenter of the affordable, mass-produced car. That was followed by the hot rod and muscle car eras that stretched from the 1920s well into the 1970s. In the deep south, what started with bootleggers running moonshine somehow morphed into the juggernaut motorsport known as NASCAR. 

Humans love to be creative, and there’s almost no better space to do that than on the back of a car. But the Maryland Department of Transportation’s Motor Vehicle Administration decided it was time to put the brakes on some of its more industrious car owners who thought they were ever so clever by somehow managing to slip an endless parade of “not safe for work” embossed verbiage through its original vanity license plate process. 

After further review, thousands of the vehicle identifiers were found to be so egregiously NSFW that the state felt it had no choice but to drop the ban hammer. While “YOMAMA,” “DRUNK,” and “LAMEZ” may not seem particularly offensive in this day and age, others will almost certainly astonish if not outright make you blush

The MVA website clearly states that it can decline a word because it’s objectionable, but it doesn’t outline exactly what constitutes “objectionable.” It appears, though, they took the “better safe than sorry” approach in 2025 and rejected words — across numerous themes and ideas — that could be even slightly misconstrued inappropriately. 

For example, any words associated with potty humor, a concept frequently used in a great many comedies over the years, were a total non-starter. “TOILET,” “GOT2P00,” and “POOP” were redacted from the list of acceptable words. Even “OLDFART” was deemed too much. A considerable range of three-digit numbers between 001 and 993 is, confoundingly, not allowed. Almost every possible construct having to do with sex, sexual orientation, or bragging about said topic, to include the word “SEX itself, “SEXY,” “GAY” (which can also mean happy), and “GAYLOVE.” If you tried to attach a body part after “GR8,” it got tossed, too.

From “DAYUUM” (and its many variations) to “BADASS,” anything that came close to what we once considered a “swear word,” but is more often than not used in everyday parlance today by CEOs to bartenders, got deleted. And if you were like one of the thousands who tried to cleverly phonetically spell out the mother of all bad words (you know the one), virtually everything with an “F” was ferreted out and tossed into a dark hole never to be seen again (including everything starting with “WTF”). The entire catalog of what Maryland’s MVA considers NSFW can be viewed on Baltimore’s FOX45 News website.