Well last I heard (and that was many years ago in fairness) there used to be full page adverts in the newspapers listing various plates that with imagination (varying from a little to a significant amount) could be turned into words ... if you took a 1 as an I or a 5 as an S etc, but the vendors were all private sellers
Here you can go to a website and create pretty much whatever string you want, so you could have your Prune User name as your license plate if you chose to. Sure it's a private company running it, but the state gets a cut of the proceeds