Wondering where in an email address numbers can appear—or if they are allowed at all? Find out here whether an email address can contain, start with, and end with a number.
First, the African and the Asian Elephant
The Asian and the African elephants all have five toes.
Their toenails differ, though, in number.
While the African forest elephant and the Asian elephants have nails on all their front toes and on four of their hind toes, African bush elephants have four front toenails on each leg and three on the back feet.
With that numbering question out of the way, how are things with numbers in email addresses?
Can an Email Address Contain a Number?
Yes.
All numbers are part of the characters always permissible in email addresses.
Can an Email Address Start with a Number?
Yes.
Numbers are ok to use anywhere in an email address. You can;
- Start an address with a number,
Example:4example@ladedu.comis valid. - End the username part with a number.
Example:example1@ladedu.comis valid. - Use numbers anywhere in the username part.
Example:e4amp1e@ladedu.comis a valid email address.
Numbers can also be part of the domain name, of course. So, examp1e@1adedu.com is a valid email address, though communicating that address can be a tad difficult.
Can an Email Address Contain a Number: FAQ
Can an address be only numbers (plus ‘@’ and dots)?
No.
The top-level domain (e.g., com or edu) will never consist of only numbers. Consequently, it is not possible to create a valid Internet (SMTP) email address that consists of nothing but numbers (and dots as well as the @ symbol).
Can I use only numbers as my email username?
Yes.
The username part of an email address can be all numbers.
Example: 42@ladedu.com is a valid email address.
Can I use other numbers and numerals in an email address?
Better not.
Only the numbers that are part of ASCII (Unicode codepoints U+0030 to U+0039) are allowed in historically supported email addresses; current email standards do allow arbitrary Unicode characters.
For example, the full-width Unicode numbers (U+FF10 to U+FF19) are not allowed, and neither are roman numerals, for instance (Unicode codepoints U+2160 and following).
(Can an email addresses contain (and start with) a number updated January 2024)