Data & Methodology
Updated
Every profile Fakenamely produces is fictional, but it is not fictional in a uniform way. Some fields are drawn from real public reference data so the record behaves correctly in software — a ZIP code a validator accepts, an area code that matches the city beside it. Other fields are generated from name pools or random digits. A generated value can coincide with a real name, address or account identifier; only explicitly reserved ranges support stronger non-assignment claims.
Which is which depends on the country, and in the US it depends on the city. This page states it precisely, names every source, and ends with a list of the defects we know about and have not fixed yet.
US addresses: what is real and what is invented
US profiles combine a city list, postal reference data and area-code mappings. The table describes the home page, state pages, city pages and US API calls. Many other countries also use geographic reference data, with the differences explained below.
| Field | Status | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| City, state | Real | A real US city and its real state, from a fixed list of 257. |
| ZIP code | Real | Selected from the codes USPS attributes to that city, filtered to those that take ordinary residential street mail, so it passes a ZIP lookup and is somewhere a person could live. |
| Phone area code | Real | A NANPA code drawn from that city's own rate centre, including current overlay codes — not from its state's wider list. |
| Street name | Invented | From a generic street-name pool, not that city's real streets. “Oak Avenue” in a generated Memphis address may not exist in Memphis. |
| House number | Invented | Random between 1 and 9989. Neither the street nor the complete address is checked against delivery points; a real-building match is possible. |
| Latitude / longitude | Approximate | A random point within roughly 13 km of the city centre, or 44 km on a state page. They locate the region, not the address, and can fall outside the city or in open water. |
| Phone line number | Reserved | Always in the 555-0100 to 555-0199 block, which the North American plan reserves for fiction. A US number can never ring a real line. |
| US SSN | Never-issued | Uses area numbers 900–999, which the Social Security Administration has never assigned, and is displayed masked. |
| Credit card number | Format fixture | Configured leading digits plus random digits and a computed Luhn check digit. This checks number structure, not account assignment or payment authorization. For processor sandbox outcomes, use its exact full documented test numbers. |
| Name, birthday | Invented | Generated from locale-appropriate pools. Any resemblance to a real person is coincidence. |
| Invented | A name-derived local part on one of three reserved domains — example.com, example.net and example.org. RFC 2606 reserves these documentation domains. The generator provides address strings, not inboxes or verified email accounts. |
Outside the United States
Twenty-eight of our thirty-seven other countries now get the same treatment as the US: the address is pinned to a real city, and the region, postal code and coordinates all follow from that one choice rather than being drawn independently. A German address names a real German city, its actual Land, and a postal code that genuinely belongs to it.
Two things still differ from a US address:
- The street is invented, exactly as in the US — the street name comes from a generic pool, not from that city's real streets.
- Only US and Canadian phone numbers come from a reserved range. For every other country the number is an ordinary locale-formatted number with no guarantee that it is unassigned. Do not dial one.
Four countries — the UK, Canada, the Netherlands and Ireland — publish only the geographic half of the postal code. That half is real and ties the code to the city; the remaining characters, which would identify a specific delivery point, are generated. It is the same split as a real US ZIP beside an invented street.
Nine countries are not pinned and still draw city, region and postal code independently, so those three need not agree with one another. Japan, China and Thailand are excluded on purpose: the available reference data is romanised, and pinning would turn a Japanese address into romaji, which is worse than the incoherence it would fix. Greece, Vietnam, Israel, Taiwan and Nigeria have no published postal dataset to pin against. Hong Kong has no postal code system at all, which is why that field is empty rather than invented.
Where the data comes from
| Data | Source | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| US ZIP codes and covered international postal reference data | GeoNames postal-code dataset | CC BY 4.0 |
| US telephone area codes | NANPA NPA / rate-centre report | Public report |
| State ZIP ranges | USPS ZIP Code lookup | Public reference |
| International phone lengths and trunk prefixes | National numbering plans as filed with the ITU | Public filings |
| Country codes | ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 | Public standard |
| Leading digits used for card-format fixtures | Examples derived from Stripe test-card documentation. Random extensions are not necessarily recognized sandbox cards or reserved ranges. | Vendor documentation |
| Names, street names and unpinned address fields | Faker locale data | MIT |
| Name meanings and origins | Widely-documented etymology; sources cited on each name page | Cited per page |
How the output is checked
Within the same generator version and reference datasets, the same seed, country, options and reference date produce the same identity. Changing the code, locale lists or call order can change the result. The API and bulk exporter pin their reference dates; interactive profile regeneration supplies the current date. These are the behaviors covered by automated tests:
- Every ZIP a city page emits must appear in that city's real USPS list.
- Every ZIP a state page emits must fall inside that state's documented USPS ranges.
- Every city with a verified area-code list must emit one of its own codes — never its state's wider set, which is how a Nashville code once reached a Memphis page.
- Two cities that share a name but sit in different states may not share a verified area code. There are two Auroras, in Illinois and Colorado, and no reference dataset can tell you which one a page means.
- A ZIP that takes no ordinary residential street mail — PO-Box-only, military, single-facility, or a campus counted entirely as group quarters — may not appear in any city or state pool. Twenty-four individually verified examples are pinned by name so the rule cannot quietly stop catching them.
- Every US phone number stays inside the reserved 555-01XX block, and every generated card number passes Luhn.
- A city page stays out of the search index until it has a hand-written, verified local content entry.
Limits we know about
This section exists because the alternative is worse. Treat it as the list of things not to rely on.
- Street names are generic, not local. They are plausible American-style street names, not the streets that exist in the city named beside them.
- Three cities borrow a neighbour's ZIPs. USPS files Bloomington MN, Lakewood CO and Parma OH under Minneapolis, Denver and Cleveland, so those pages draw their neighbour's codes.
- The delivery classification is inferred, not licensed. USPS sells the authoritative file; ours is derived from public census and postal signals. It is deliberately conservative, so it will drop some codes that do take street mail.
- Nine countries are still not geographically coherent — Japan, China, Thailand, Greece, Vietnam, Israel, Taiwan, Nigeria and Hong Kong draw city, region and postal code independently. See the section above for why each is excluded.
- The international phone format is omitted more often than you might expect, on purpose. We check every number against the country's published numbering plan and drop the
phoneE164field rather than emit a value we cannot stand behind. Some locales in the underlying library produce malformed numbers outright — Finland, Italy and Mexico are the worst, and for those the field is absent on most records. A length check also cannot catch every error, so treat the international format outside the US and Canada as best-effort rather than dialable. - Contact handles are not transliterations. Latin letters with supported diacritics are folded for the email local part. When stripping a non-Latin name leaves too few letters, the contact builder uses a fixed ASCII word-pair fallback rather than a bare number. Username output can also use a locale adjective plus a numeric suffix. These strings do not establish availability, uniqueness or a verified reading of the original name.
- Reproduction requires the same version and inputs. The bulk exporter exposes an editable seed; preview and download use it with a fixed reference date. The API also accepts a seed. Save the seed, settings and exported file if exact rows must survive a future data or code update. Ordinary profile and name buttons do not expose a seed control, and indexed row seeds differ from a bare seed used directly with the engine.
- Coverage is deliberately narrow. US ZIPs are five digits with no ZIP+4, there are no PO-box-format street lines, no territory addresses, and no mode for deliberately malformed input — those fixtures you still write by hand.
How this is maintained
Reference datasets are refreshed when the upstream source changes materially — a new area-code overlay entering service, a postal-code release — and this page carries the date of its last substantive revision, as does every data page on the site. Corrections are made in the data files themselves so the generator, the public API and the on-page tables cannot drift apart. If you find something wrong, the contact page reaches a person, and it will be added to the list above until it is fixed.
What this data must not be used for
Generated identities are for building and testing software, filling demos, and declining to hand your real details to forms that have no need for them. They are not for:
- Receiving mail or parcels. Generated street addresses are not verified delivery points and can coincide with real buildings. Use an address you control for anything you need to receive.
- Identity verification or KYC. Submitting fictional details where a real identity is legally required is fraud, regardless of how valid the checksum is.
- Forged documents or identifiers. Producing an ID, a record or any instrument intended to pass as genuine.
- Impersonating a real person, or evading a ban, a trial limit or a service's terms.
- Live payments. Generated card details are form-test fixtures, not verified account credentials. For processor tests, use documented full test numbers in that processor’s test environment.
- False statements in official contexts — governmental, medical, legal or employment.
The full terms are on the terms of use page, and what we do and do not collect from you is on the privacy policy.
Guides on government ID number formats
Frequently asked questions
Are the ZIP codes real?+
Yes, for US addresses. Each generated ZIP is selected from the codes USPS attributes to the city shown beside it, then filtered down to the ones that take ordinary residential street mail — so PO-box-only, military, single-facility and campus codes are excluded, and the result is somewhere a person could actually live. Three cities that USPS files under a larger neighbour — Bloomington MN, Lakewood CO and Parma OH — draw that neighbour's codes instead. Outside the US it depends on the page, and the difference is worth stating plainly: most non-US cities and countries we cover draw from postal codes published for that exact place, joined from GeoNames and the national postal files. Where we hold no verified list for a city, the code is completed from that city's real leading digits to the country's national format — so it is correctly shaped and starts in the right place, but the full code is not guaranteed to be one in service. The United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and Ireland are a deliberate middle case: the published data carries only the geographic half of the code, which is the half that ties it to the city, and the delivery-point half is generated.
Is the street address a real place?+
It is not verified as a real place. The house number is random and the street name comes from a generic pool rather than a lookup of that city's streets. The street may not exist there, but a coincidental match with a real building is possible; random generation does not guarantee a nonexistent address. The city, region and postal code around it are real and agree with one another on US profiles and on twenty-eight other countries; for the nine remaining countries they are still independent draws.
Can a generated phone number reach a real person?+
A US or Canadian one cannot: the line number always sits inside the 555-0100 to 555-0199 block, which the North American Numbering Plan reserves for fiction and never assigns to a subscriber. Numbers for other countries are only formatted to look correct for that country — they are not drawn from any reserved range, so one could belong to somebody. Never dial a generated non-US number.
Where do the telephone area codes come from?+
From NANPA's own area-code and rate-centre reports, matched to each city's own rate centre for all 257 of our US cities. That distinction matters: a state-level list mixes in codes for other cities entirely, which is how a Nashville code once appeared on a Memphis page and why Modesto used to carry a San Francisco one. The state pages follow the same rule, because they are city pages in disguise — each one pins a representative city and prints its address, so it draws that city's codes rather than the state's wider set. Until July 2026 it did not, and 38 of the 51 contradicted themselves on screen: a Houston address beside a Dallas code. Canadian numbers use real Canadian codes matched to the province on the same record.
Will the same seed always produce the same identity?+
The public API and bulk exporter support repeatable output when the generator version, source datasets, seed, options and reference date are held fixed. Bulk exposes an editable seed and uses the same seed for preview and download. Ordinary name and profile buttons do not expose a seed input. Indexed row seeds differ from a bare engine seed, and changing code or locale data can change results; save an exported fixture when exact values must remain stable.
Can I use a generated identity to sign up for a service?+
Only where fictional details are acceptable — a test environment, a demo, or a low-stakes form that has no legitimate need for your real data. Never use one where a real identity is legally required, such as identity verification, KYC, finance, or anything you expect to physically receive, and never to produce a document intended to pass as genuine. Generated data is for exercising software, not for deceiving a party entitled to the truth.
Are the credit card numbers usable?+
They are usable for testing and nothing else. Every number starts from a published payment-processor sandbox prefix, fills the middle with random digits and closes with a valid Luhn check digit, so a validator recognises the card scheme and accepts the format. The result is not a live card and not a documented test card either — treat it as a format fixture, never as a payment instrument.
What are the known limitations?+
Street names are generic rather than local; the ZIP delivery classification is inferred from public data rather than licensed from USPS; coordinates are scattered near the city centre and do not locate the address; and nine countries are still not geographically coherent, with the city, region and postal code drawn independently. The methodology page lists these in full rather than burying them.