澳A 12345
澳 plates: Macau, and what the letters mean
Facts checked
A plate beginning 澳 was registered in Macau, a special administrative region. The character is Ào, said roughly “ow (as in 'how')”. 澳 means a bay or sheltered inlet. It is the first character of 澳门 Àomén, 'bay gate', and on mainland plates it is a suffix rather than a leading character.
The letter after it is the office that issued the plate. 澳A belongs to Macau.
The colour of the plate is a separate fact from the characters: it says what kind of vehicle carries it, and the characters say nothing about it. The colour guide sets out what each of the 7 colours licenses.
Key facts
| Plate character | 澳 “ow (as in 'how')” |
|---|---|
| Place | Macau |
| Kind | special administrative region |
| Capital | Macau |
| City letters | 1 |
| Why this character | 澳 means a bay or sheltered inlet. It is the first character of 澳门 Àomén, 'bay gate', and on mainland plates it is a suffix rather than a leading character. |
The city letters
- 澳Z Macau cross-border vehicles (issued as 粤Z ···· 澳)
| Prefix | Letter | City | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 澳Z | Z | Macau cross-border vehicles (issued as 粤Z ···· 澳) | Macau runs its own registration system and its own plates; 澳 never leads a mainland plate. A Macau vehicle allowed to drive into the mainland carries an additional Guangdong registration in the form 粤Z, four alphanumerics and the character 澳 — a black plate with white characters, issued by the Guangdong provincial public security department and normally valid only inside Guangdong. Cars in the Northbound Travel for Macau Vehicles scheme, and single-plate cars under the Hengqin arrangement, do not need one. |
Macau plates: questions people ask
- What does 澳 mean on a Chinese licence plate?
- 澳 (Ào, "ow (as in 'how')") is the abbreviation for Macau. 澳 means a bay or sheltered inlet. It is the first character of 澳门 Àomén, 'bay gate', and on mainland plates it is a suffix rather than a leading character.
- Which city is 澳A?
- Macau. The letter A goes to the seat of government in almost every province, and the remaining letters were assigned to the other issuing offices.
Related
Sources for Macau
- Wikipedia (Chinese), 中华人民共和国民用机动车号牌 (Civil motor-vehicle registration plates of the People's Republic of China). Read . Carries the complete province-by-province table of issuing-office letters, with the retired and renumbered series footnoted to Chinese news and public-security sources. Used as a finding aid; wording here is our own.
- Wikipedia (Chinese), 中华人民共和国机动车号牌 (Motor-vehicle registration plates of the People's Republic of China). Read . Plate types, colours, diplomatic, police, armed-police and temporary series.
- Wikipedia, Vehicle registration plates of China. Read . English list of prefixes; the article flags its own list as incomplete, so it is used here to cross-check the Chinese table rather than as the primary record.