What it means
پلاک (pelâk) means license plate, number plate on a vehicle, or a house number plaque. The word is borrowed from French plaque, meaning a flat plate or sign, which entered Persian along with European administrative and urban terminology in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In daily use, پلاک ماشین (pelâk-e mâshin) refers to a car’s license plate and پلاک خانه (pelâk-e khune) refers to the number or nameplate on a residential building. The word is simple, neutral, and used across all registers and age groups. It has no competing Persian synonym in common circulation: the word is fully naturalized.
How to use it
- پلاک ماشینش چنده؟ (pelâk-e mâshinash chande?) “What is his car’s license plate number?”
- پلاک خونهمون ۱۲ه. (pelâk-e khunemun davâzda-ye.) “Our house number is 12.”
- پلیس پلاک ماشین رو یادداشت کرد. (pulis pelâk-e mâshin ro yâd-dâsht kard.) “The police wrote down the car’s license plate.”
- پلاکشو عوض کرده بودن. (pelâkasho avaz karde budan.) “They had changed the license plate.”
Cultural note
In Iran, license plates include a regional code that traditionally identified which city or province the vehicle was registered in, making پلاک a reliable marker of someone’s origin. Before reforms to the national plate system, Tehranis could immediately recognize out-of-town plates and vice versa, which fed a layer of social commentary about urban and provincial identity. The phrase پلاک تهران داره (pelâk-e Tehran dâre, it has a Tehran plate) was enough to tell a story about a car’s owner.
References
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