Vanity plates can be a fun way to customize your vehicle -- especially if you can be clever with only eight characters. I personally always enjoy seeing a really great vanity plate when I'm out and about. But, like all good things, there's always going to be a few people who ruin it for the rest of us.

Enter your number to get our free mobile app

The good people at Government Attic requested a list of banned or prohibited vanity plates from the New York State DMV and posted the results on their website for us all to enjoy. Some were seemingly harmless, like "SKATA" (perhaps a misspelled version of "skater"?). Others, ok pretty much all the rest, were profane or offensive and really make you question what the people who requested them were thinking. But hey! You'll never know if you don't try, right?

Check out our gallery below of five vanity license plates that are banned in New York State. You can check out the rest of the list on governmentattic.org.

More From 98.1 The Hawk