Of the 100 possible two-digit codes in the middle of a Malaysian identity card number, the National Registration Department's tables assign 86. Fifty-six belong to Malaysia, one of them for a state that is not known, and thirty cover births abroad, statelessness and unknown nationality; the other fourteen are unassigned. We checked every code against the department's published tables, in English and in Malay.
A MyKad number (nombor IC), written as 12 digits in three groups, starts with the holder's date of birth as year, month and day. The two middle digits are the code the department, Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara (JPN), calls a "State Code", and which everyone reads as the place of birth. The last four digits, a deputy minister said in 2017, are computer generated. By a widespread convention an odd last digit means male and an even one female, but no JPN page we found states that rule.
The middle pair does not always name a place
JPN's state-code table gives every state and federal territory at least one code, and most several. Johor, Perak, Selangor, Sarawak and Kuala Lumpur hold five codes each, and Putrajaya one. Code 82 is "Negeri Tidak Diketahui", state unknown.
| State or territory | Codes |
|---|---|
| Johor | 01, 21, 22, 23, 24 |
| Kedah | 02, 25, 26, 27 |
| Kelantan | 03, 28, 29 |
| Melaka | 04, 30 |
| Negeri Sembilan | 05, 31, 59 |
| Pahang | 06, 32, 33 |
| Pulau Pinang | 07, 34, 35 |
| Perak | 08, 36, 37, 38, 39 |
| Perlis | 09, 40 |
| Selangor | 10, 41, 42, 43, 44 |
| Terengganu | 11, 45, 46 |
| Sabah | 12, 47, 48, 49 |
| Sarawak | 13, 50, 51, 52, 53 |
| Kuala Lumpur | 14, 54, 55, 56, 57 |
| Labuan | 15, 58 |
| Putrajaya | 16 |
| State unknown | 82 |
JPN gives no reason why a state has more than one code. The code also says nothing about race, religion or citizenship. A Malaysian citizen born in Singapore carries code 66, and the country table only makes sense as a list of birthplaces: it has its own entry for Mecca.
Hong Kong and Macau get no code of their own
JPN's country-code table has 294 rows. Fifteen codes each name a single country, among them 60 Brunei, 61 Indonesia, 65 the Philippines, 66 Singapore, 67 Thailand, 68 Vietnam, 74 China and 77 Saudi Arabia. Other codes group places, and the table prints a regional name for some of them: 83 ASIA PASIFIK, which includes Australia, New Zealand and Timor-Leste; 84 AMERIKA SELATAN; 85 AFRIKA; 88 TIMUR TENGAH; 89 TIMUR JAUH, which lists Japan, both Koreas and Taiwan; and 91 AMERIKA UTARA. Codes 71 and 72 carry the label LUAR NEGARA, abroad.
Code 93 carries no regional name and holds 66 rows, including Hong Kong and Macau, so a Malaysian born in Hong Kong shares a code with dozens of other places. Code 98 is for stateless people, and 99 groups Mecca, which sits apart from Saudi Arabia's 77, with refugees, United Nations bodies and unspecified nationality. The table has quirks as published: it lists Byelorussia under 64, the Myanmar code, and Belarus under 92.
The date carries no century
The first six digits are a two-digit year, a month and a day, so someone born in 1925 and someone born in 2025 on the same day begin with the same six digits. A checker that accepts real dates across any 100-year span accepts 36,525 of the million possible six-digit values, and it has to guess the century. JPN publishes no rule for it that we found. Any such window also moves each 1 January, so a checker that reads 27 as 1927 today will read it as 2027 once that year begins, which is a limit of the checker and says nothing wrong about the card.
No JPN rule we found makes the last digit mark sex
The Malay and Chinese explainers that rank for this question state the odd-male, even-female rule as fact, and Microsoft's data-protection definition of the number calls the last digit a "gender code". JPN's own pages do not state it. In November 2017, after PKR Women's vice-president, Voon Shiak Ni, raised the case of a woman whose number ended in an odd digit, the Borneo Post reported the Deputy Home Minister, Masir Kujat, saying the last digit "is not indicative of the holder's gender" and that the last four digits "are computer generated". By Voon's account, the woman's Australian visa application had been rejected with the note "Invalid National Number Format". The minister said he would follow up with JPN before clarifying the case, and we found no later JPN statement either way.
The format carries no published check digit
JPN publishes no check-digit rule, and Microsoft's definition records "Checksum: No". Independent developers circulate a proposed rule based on the ISO 7064 standard and say themselves that JPN has never confirmed it; we have not been able to test it on any number we could print. So a website can check that a number is well formed, with a real date and an assigned code, but not that it belongs to anyone. Singapore works differently: ICA describes its identification numbers as ending in a checksum letter, which our guide to ID check digits takes apart.
Until 1 October 2026, our MyKad validator called the odd-even rule a documented JPN convention and accepted birth dates later than the day it was used. Our validator now notes whether the last digit is odd or even, includes the minister's statement, and rejects future dates. Malaysia's Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (Act 709) covers personal data in commercial transactions and, under section 3(1), does not apply to the federal and state governments; its list of sensitive personal data does not name identity-card numbers.
The number does not change with the card
A child's first card is the MyKid, issued to children under 12, and JPN says its number "will be used in all matters from birth to end of life". The new-generation MyKad, which JPN said it would issue in phases from 17 September 2026, keeps it too: JPN's FAQ says the new card "does not mean that a person's identity card number will change". It did change something for its first holders. Free Malaysia Today reported that some banks' online identity checks failed to recognise the new card, and that JPN said service providers were updating their systems.
JPN's own poster for the new card prints its sample number as 888888-88-8888, which cannot belong to anyone, because no year has a month 88. The back of the same card shows two more two-digit groups, and JPN does not say what they mean.
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