Introduction
hetu
is an R package for structural handling of identification codes used in Finland, most importantly Finnish flavour of national identification numbers, the Finnish personal identity codes (in Finnish: henkilötunnus (hetu), in Swedish: personbeteckning). Some functions can also be used with Finnish Business ID numbers (in Finnish: yritys- ja yhteisötunnus (y-tunnus), in Swedish: företags- och organisationsnummer (FO-nummer)) and Finnish Unique Identification Numbers (FINUID, in Finnish: sähköinen asiointitunnus (SATU), in Swedish: elektronisk kommunikationskod).
The syntax in this package aims to be, when convenient, similar with another package specializing in national identification numbers: the sweidnumbr R package for working with Swedish personal identity numbers and corporation identity numbers.
Installation
Install stable version from CRAN:
install.packages(hetu)
Alternatively, use devtools
package to install the latest development version from GitHub:
devtools::install_github("rOpenGov/hetu")
Development version can be also installed using the r-universe:
# Enable this universe
options(repos = c(
ropengov = "https://ropengov.r-universe.dev",
CRAN = "https://cloud.r-project.org"
))
install.packages("hetu")
Loading the package and accessing the tutorial
Loading the package in R command line:
A simple example of printing a table containing data from 2 imaginary personal identity codes:
example_hetu <- c("010101-0101", "111111-111C")
hetu(example_hetu)
#> hetu sex p.num ctrl.char date day month year century
#> 1 010101-0101 Female 010 1 1901-01-01 1 1 1901 -
#> 2 111111-111C Male 111 C 1911-11-11 11 11 1911 -
#> valid.pin
#> 1 TRUE
#> 2 TRUE
The package can also be used to check the validity of Finnish Business IDs (Yritys- ja Yhteisötunnus, or Y-tunnus for short):
example_ytunnus <- c("5996039-9", "5619117-6", "6095515-9")
bid_ctrl(example_ytunnus)
#> [1] TRUE TRUE TRUE
A tutorial is included with the package and can be viewed with vignette-function:
vignette("hetu")
Contributing
-
Submit suggestions and bug reports (provide the output of
sessionInfo()
andpackageVersion("hetu")
and preferably provide a reproducible example) - Send a pull request
- Star us on the Github page
- See our website for additional contact information
Acknowledgements
Kindly cite this work as follows (citing the related paper strongly preferred but we encourage also citing software used in research):
> print(citation("hetu"), bibtex=TRUE)
To cite package ‘hetu’ in publications use:
Kantanen P, Bülow E, Lahtinen A, Magnusson M, Paananen J, Lahti L
(2025). "Validating and Extracting Information from National
Identification Numbers in R: The Case of Finland and Sweden." _The R
Journal_, *16*, 4-14. ISSN 2073-4859, doi:10.32614/RJ-2024-023
<https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2024-023>.
A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
@Article{RJ-2024-023,
title = {Validating and Extracting Information from National Identification Numbers in R: The Case of Finland and Sweden},
author = {Pyry Kantanen and Erik B{\"u}low and Aleksi Lahtinen and M{\aa}ns Magnusson and Jussi Paananen and Leo Lahti},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.32614/RJ-2024-023},
journal = {The R Journal},
volume = {16},
issue = {3},
issn = {2073-4859},
pages = {4-14},
}
We strongly recommend citing the software used in research, as per
FORCE11 Software citation principles:
Pyry Kantanen, Måns Magnusson, Jussi Paananen and Leo Lahti (2025).
hetu: Structural Handling of Finnish Personal Identity Codes
[Computer software]. R package version 1.2.0. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.hetu
A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
@Misc{,
title = {hetu: Structural Handling of Finnish Personal Identity Codes},
author = {Pyry Kantanen and M{\aa}ns Magnusson and Jussi Paananen and Leo Lahti},
doi = {10.32614/CRAN.package.hetu},
url = {https://github.com/rOpenGov/hetu},
year = {2025},
note = {R package version 1.2.0},
}
We are grateful to all contributors! This project is part of rOpenGov.