In the States, you can personalize your license plate. In Missouri, it costs only $15 to replace the 7 characters with something more personal. One of my Jordanian friends replaced his license plate with “MANSAF.” Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture but if you don’t know what Mansaf is here is a picture and an explanation.
Arabs in America usually personalize their plates with either a person’s name or the name of the city they came from. ‘Irbid’ license plate, in the second picture below, is a name of a city in Jordan. Americans are more creative when it comes to these vanity plates. Theirs usually have a statement. Like getting over an ex (see this and this), political, funny, or bragging about their car.
In the Arab Gulf countries, their personalized license plates are numbers. The lower the number the more expensive the plate is. These numbers are auctioned. In 2008, an Abu Dhabi license plate was sold for $14 million [source].
J A R A A D S 
Irbid 7aderah b qowwah dawman 😉
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Yes, Irbid as they call it The Bride of the North 🙂
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Once I lived near a neighbor in Amman who had number 1 on his Mercedes, 111 on his BMW, and 11111 on his Hummer
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Wow. The king was your neighbor? As far as I know we don’t have an auction for license plates so he has to be a big shot or super rich to have these numbers.
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It wasn’t the king but someone from the Arab Gulf countries.
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Why do the lower numbers have so much more status on the Arab world? That’s interesting.
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Two reasons:
1. Unlike in the USA, DMV in Arabia does not allow vanity plates with text.
2. Arabs take pride of themselves. Being first (number 1) is better than being second.
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