The Icelandic identification number (
Icelandic: , abbreviated ) is a unique
national identification number
A national identification number, national identity number, or national insurance number or JMBG/EMBG is used by the governments of many countries as a means of tracking their citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents for the purp ...
used by the
Icelandic government to identify individuals and organisations in Iceland, administered by the
Registers Iceland
Registers Iceland ( is, Þjóðskrá Íslands) is the main official civil registry for the nation of Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most ...
. ID numbers are issued to Icelandic citizens at birth, and to foreign nationals resident in Iceland upon registration.
They are also issued to corporations and institutions.
Number composition
ID numbers are composed of ten digits. For a personal ID number, the first six of these are the individual's date of birth in the format DDMMYY.
The seventh and eighth digits are randomly chosen when the ID number is allocated, ranging from 20 to 99 (with some exceptions). The ninth is a
check digit
A check digit is a form of redundancy check used for error detection on identification numbers, such as bank account numbers, which are used in an application where they will at least sometimes be input manually. It is analogous to a binary parity ...
, and the tenth indicates the century of the individual's birth: '9' for 1900–1999, '0' for 2000–2099. ID numbers are often written with a
hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (figure d ...
following the first six digits, e.g. 120174-3399.
D
1D
2M
1M
2Y
1Y
2R
1R
2PC
D = day, M = Month, Y = year, R = random, P = parity, C = century.
The check digit equation is:
The consequence of this design is that at most 80 people can be born on the same day. The exact same formula is used for the identification numbers of organisations and companies, instead of the date of birth the initial registration date is used and then the number 4 is added to the first digit to makes sure there are no conflicts with individuals.
Use
The system is similar to that employed by some other European countries, but Iceland makes unusually extensive and public use of its ID numbers, with businesses and educational institutions eschewing internal identification numbers in favour of the national system, and its use being mandated in banking transactions. Furthermore, online banking services in Iceland offer a lookup service to check names against numbers. Because of their public nature, ID numbers are not used for
authentication
Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicati ...
. The completeness of the National Register has eliminated the need for the country to conduct a regular
census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses incl ...
: population statistics can be obtained by simply querying the database.
See also
*
National identification numbering in Iceland National identification numbering in Iceland was established in 1953 when the birth number system was implemented. In 1959, the name number system was implemented and used parallel to the birth number. The third and present system is the identifica ...
References
External links
*
{{National identification numbers
Society of Iceland
National identification numbers