Do You Know Why Minnesotans Call These “Tabs”?

Things that make you hmmm? That song has been playing in my head for the last day or so after I went to update the stickers on the license plates for the vehicles my wife and I drive. Everyone here in Minnesota kept calling the stickers “tabs”.  

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Tabs? Why do you call them tabs I would ask, and no one seemed to know. “That’s just what they’re called” was the most common response.  

I went to the Stearns County Offices in Waite Park to get the new tabs and I asked the very nice lady who helped me, and she didn't know either. She said that some people call them stickers. I told him those people must be in the minority because everyone I encountered called them tabs.  

Upon thinking about it, I’ve heard that term a lot and just didn’t know what it was. You see I’m from North Carolina, and folks there don’t call them tabs. We get new stickers for our tag or update the registration for our vehicles.   

Remember earlier when I said, “Things that make you go hmm”, I kept thinking about this, what are they called tabs. I began to dig around some and I actually found an explanation that makes sense. 

I found a website called License Plate Room that explains the history of license plates, which have been around for more than 100 years.  

The first state to require motor vehicles to be registered was New York in 1901 and the identifier was the owner's initials on the back. In 1903, Massachusetts became the first state to have a state issued license plate.  

License plates were metal and came in different sizes, colors and styles depending on which state you lived in.  

Here's where the “tabs” come into play. In the 1940’s, a small piece of metal with numbers on the year would be clamped on the license plate so it could be used for more than one year.  

Tabs were eventually replaced by stickers, but the name “tabs” stuck.  

I asked Professor Google how many states used the term “tabs” and there’s only three. In addition to Minnesota, Michigan and Washington sometimes refer to their tag stickers as tabs.  

I feel better that I didn’t know the term “tabs”, but I also learned something about the state we live in now. Maybe this helped you too.