Latin Gematria Calculator

What Latin gematria is

Latin gematria gives the letters of the Latin alphabet Hebrew-style values — units, tens, hundreds — so that Latin names and words can be summed like Hebrew or Greek ones. The one historical table for it was published by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa in 1533.

If the values in the tile above look familiar, that is because they are the “Jewish gematria” of Gematrix and every calculator that copied it. This page presents the same table under its accurate name and spends its space on what Agrippa actually wrote, because the modern version departs from him in several places that change results.

The Romans did not do this

Classical Latin had no letter-numbers. Roman numerals borrow seven letter-shapes — I, V, X, L, C, D, M — as symbols for 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1,000, but B is not 2 and the alphabet is not a counting sequence^{[2] Source: Gematria}. Latin-speaking Romans who played number games did so in Greek: Suetonius, writing in Latin, records the anti-Nero isopsephy in Greek letters, because only Greek letters had values^{[4] Source: Isopsephy}. Any “Latin gematria” older than the Renaissance is a modern back-projection.

Agrippa’s table, 1533

In De Occulta Philosophia Book II, chapter XX, having tabulated the Hebrew and Greek numeral letters, Agrippa remarks that the Roman alphabet falls four short of the twenty-seven characters needed for three full tiers, and supplies the shortfall himself: “their places are supplied with I, and V simple consonants, as in the names of John, and Valentine, and hi, and hu aspirate consonants as in Hierom, and Huilhelme”^{[1] 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”}. His list then runs:

The chapter goes on to describe what the numbers were for: summing a person’s name and their parents’ names and dividing by nine or twelve to find a ruling planet or sign — arithmancy in the service of astrology, which is the context in which Renaissance Latin gematria lived^{[1] 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”}.

A 23-letter alphabet

Agrippa’s alphabet had no J, U or W. The letter I wrote both the vowel (as in Iulius) and the consonant we now spell J; V wrote both the vowel we spell U and the consonant V. So his “I consonant = 600” and “V consonant = 700” are not extra letters but extra uses, decided by sound: the I in Iohannes is 600, the I in Iulius is 9. Likewise the first V of Valentinus is 700 (consonant) and the second, in -nus, is 200 (vowel). HI and HV — the aspirated onsets of Hieronymus and Huilhelmus (Wilhelm) — round out the twenty-seven.

This sound-based logic cannot be automated for arbitrary text without knowing how each word is pronounced, which is why every modern calculator, this one included, converts it into a spelling-based rule.

From Latin to “Jewish”

The modern table keeps Agrippa’s numbers and reassigns them by spelling: I is always 9 and J always 600; U is always 200 and V always 700; W takes 900 from HV (Agrippa himself notes the Germans wrote hu as “a double vv”); and HI’s 800 is dropped, since no English letter corresponds to it. Gematrix put this table online under the heading “Jewish Gematria”^{[3] Source: Gematria calculator}, presumably for its Hebrew-like tiers, and the name stuck. The consequences for Latin words are real. Agrippa would have counted Valentinus with a 700 and a 200; a modern calculator counts the same word by spelling — compare Valentinus = 1205 · Ualentinus = 705 — and Agrippa’s pronunciation-based reading is not something a spelling-based tool can recover.

Latin words

Live values under the modern rule: Roma = 161 · Caesar = 180 · Deus = 299 · Iesus = 394 · lux = 520 · veritas = 985. For classical Latin spellings use I rather than J and V for consonantal u where the manuscript does (Iesus, Iulius, ueritas or veritas); for English words the same table is on the Jewish gematria page with Gematrix-style comparisons. Whichever spelling you use, say which — in this cipher a single I/J or U/V choice moves the total by hundreds.