Kids-Army offers an easy way to customize Army Style Dog Tags! Simply enter your desired text into the input boxes when ordering the product (see the image below for an example). Do not input any symbols or special characters - our dogtag machine only accepts numbers and letters.

The term “Dog Tag” was the nick name given to the identification tags worn by soldiers because of their resemblance to actual dog tags.

The first recorded use of the dog tag was by the Chinese in the mid-19^th century in 1851. It was made of wood and was worn on the belt and included the soldier’s name, age, birthplace and date of enlistment.

The first recorded use by American Soldiers was in 1861 during the American Civil War, soldiers pinned paper notes with their name and home address to the backs of their coats. Other soldiers stenciled identification on their knapsacks or scratched it in the soft lead backing of the army belt buckle.

The British Army issued identification discs from the beginning of the First World War. The discs were made of fiber, one in red and one in green, and hung around the neck by butcher's twine.

The U.S. Army first authorized identification tags on December 20, 1906, which were known as the Kennedy identification tag. At that time the Dog Tag was an aluminum tag, the size of a silver half dollar, stamped with the name, rank, company, regiment, or corps of the wearer, and was to be worn by each officer and enlisted man from the neck, underneath the clothing, by a cord. The tag was issued to enlisted men for free and at cost price to officers.

The army changed regulations on July 6, 1916, so that all soldiers were issued two tags: one to stay with the soldier and the other to go to the person in charge of the burial.

The most common format for a Dog Tag is as follows: