Gematria name calculator

How to calculate a name

A name is calculated exactly like any other word: each letter becomes a number, the numbers are added, and the sum is optionally reduced to one digit.

1. Fix the spelling. Write the name the way you will always write it — the value belongs to the spelling, not to the person.
2. Choose a cipher. English Ordinal (A = 1 … Z = 26) is the usual starting point. Online, “Jewish gematria” means the 1533 Agrippa table^{[2] Source: Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres), Book II, chapter XX: “What numbers are attributed to letters; and of divining by the same”} and “English gematria” means Ordinal × 6; those labels come from Gematrix and are documented on the methodology page^{[1] Source: Gematria calculator}.
3. Add the letters. Spaces, hyphens and apostrophes count for nothing; capitals count the same as lower case (except in the Francis Bacon cipher).
4. Reduce if you want. Add the digits of the total until one remains: 116 → 8. Gematria treats the full sum as primary; numerology uses the reduced digit.

The how-to page walks through the arithmetic for Hebrew and Greek as well.

Which name to enter

First name, full name, birth name, married name, nickname — every choice gives a different number, and no English tradition settles it, because there is no English tradition older than the tables themselves. In English Ordinal, Jon = 39 · John = 47 · Jonathan = 83. Decide before you calculate and be consistent; a value found by trying every form until one fits is a search result, not a property of the name.

Hebrew practice is clearer. A person’s Hebrew name — given at birth or at naming, used in religious documents and when called to the Torah — is the name that is calculated, and the site’s Hebrew calculator applies the standard Mispar Hechrachi values to it.

Spelling changes everything

Three spellings of one name: Catherine = 83 · Katherine = 91 · Kathryn = 97. Two of a transliterated name: Muhammad = 74 · Mohammed = 72. The second case matters most. A name from Arabic, Hebrew, Russian or Chinese has no single English value; it has one per romanisation, and the choice of romanisation was made by a translator, not by the name. Comparing English values of transliterated names therefore compares translators’ habits. To calculate a name from another alphabet honestly, calculate it in that alphabet.

Names in Hebrew tradition

Reading names by their values is old and, in Jewish tradition, unusually well anchored. The most famous case is in the text itself: God renames Abram אברם as Abraham אברהם by adding the letter ה (Genesis 17:5)^{[3] Source: Genesis 17:5}, and the value rises from 243 to 248. The Talmud counts 248 positive commandments, one for each “limb” of the body^{[4] Source: Makkot 23b–24a}, and later commentators drew the line between Abraham’s new number and the whole Torah observed with the whole body. Whether that was intended by Genesis is not knowable; that the arithmetic is exact is.

Two further customs are worth knowing. In naming, some families consider the value of a proposed name alongside its meaning and its namesakes — as one factor, not a rule. And a widely followed practice recorded in later halakhic literature is to recite, at the end of the daily Amidah, a verse whose first and last letters match the first and last letters of one’s own name. Neither practice claims that the number reveals anything; the Jewish Encyclopedia’s summary of the whole tradition is that gematria illustrates and supports, and is treated “derogatorily” when used to establish^{[5] Source: Gematria}.

What a name value means

In gematria, a value means what the other words with that value mean. For a name in an English cipher the honest answer is usually “many things, therefore nothing in particular”: English Ordinal totals for common words cluster between about 40 and 120, so a five-to-nine-letter name shares its value with dozens of ordinary words. The accuracy page measures this on a published corpus. A shared value between a name and a word is where a comparison can begin; it is not evidence that the comparison is meaningful, and the sensible use of the calculator is curiosity, not conclusion.

Common names, five ciphers

Computed live by the same engine as the calculator. Each row is one spelling; the same person’s name in another form would give different numbers.

Name numerology

If you came here for an Expression, Destiny, Soul Urge or Personality number, the arithmetic is the Full Reduction cipher reduced to one digit — for vowels only or consonants only, type just those letters^{[6] Source: Numerology}. The gematria vs numerology page works a full name through both practices and explains where they part company: gematria stops at the number, numerology goes on to a meaning table that gematria never had.