When It Comes to Vanity Plates, Virginia Is Vainest of All

RICHMOND, Va. — A state-by-state survey of the popularity of vanity license plates has found that car and truck owners in Virginia are the vainest of them all.

Out of the 9.3 million personalized plates on the roads of America, about one in 10 are in Virginia, according to rankings provided to the Associated Press by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. That's 16% of the plates issued by Virginia. New Hampshire came in second with nearly 14%. Illinois had about 13.4%, but that was nearly 1.3 million plates, the most of any state. "If you've got 9.3 million people across the U.S. sporting vanity plates, you've got a cultural phenomenon," an AAMVA spokesman, Jason King, said.

Texas had the fewest, with only about a half percent of drivers personalizing their plates.

Stefan Lonce calls it "minimalist poetry in motion" — telling a story in eight or fewer characters.

Mr. Lonce — the New York-based author of the upcoming book "LCNS2ROM-License to Roam: Vanity Plates and the Stories they Tell" — worked with AAMVA to survey vehicle-licensing agencies in each state.

"I think a lot of people have stories to tell, and they really want pieces of those stories out there," Mr. Lonce said, acknowledging that he initially thought it was silly for people to spend extra money to personalize their license plates. Kathy Carmichael drives around with the plate COFENUT, although she is down to just three from eight to 10 cups of java a day. "It's a personality thing," Ms. Carmichael, 58, a real estate agent in Mechanicsville, Va., said. "You get to know something about the person in front of you or who passes you."

Ion Bogdan Vasi, an assistant sociology professor at Columbia University, calls people who personalize their plates "the narcissistic-materialist poets of the iGeneration."