Hebrew Gematria

The calculator takes one word or name, in Latin letters or Hebrew script, plus an optional second name for comparison. It returns four totals: the standard count (mispar hechrachi), the large count (mispar gadol), the small count (mispar katan) and the ordinal count (mispar siduri). Beneath them sit a single-digit root, a letter-by-letter breakdown, and a badge whenever the standard or large total equals one of twelve well-known words listed lower down, such as chai at 18. Birth dates play no part.

Hebrew script is read as written. Each letter takes its usual value, from aleph at 1 to tav at 400, and the five final forms (kaf, mem, nun, pe and tsade sofit) count like their ordinary letters except in the large total, where they become 500 to 900. Vowel points and stray Latin characters are skipped. Latin input goes through a fixed phonetic table instead: A becomes aleph, E he, O ayin, U, V and W vav, I, J and Y yod, C, K and X kaf, S samekh. Because that table never produces a final form, a Latin name always shows matching standard and large totals.

Take Maria Silva. Maria becomes mem 40, aleph 1, resh 200, yod 10, aleph 1, making 252; Silva becomes samekh 60, yod 10, lamed 30, vav 6, aleph 1, making 107. Standard and large are both 359, small 26, ordinal 89, and the root 8, since 3 + 5 + 9 is 17 and 1 + 7 is 8. Nothing on the famous list matches. Typed in Hebrew as מריה (mem, resh, yod, he), the first name gives 255 standard and large, 12 small, 48 ordinal and a root of 3. Hebrew usually leaves vowels unwritten, so the Latin route rarely agrees with a native spelling.

Spelling, then, is the real input, and it is worth trying the forms a name actually takes. Add a second name and the page lines up all four totals, counts how many agree and notes whether the roots coincide. In Jewish textual tradition gematria has long worked as interpretive wordplay: a reader notices that two words share a value and asks what the link might suggest. The everyday example is chai, meaning life, which adds to 18, hence gifts given in multiples of 18. A match here is best read the same way, as a prompt to reflect on a name and why it was chosen, not as a verdict.

The method shows how a chosen spelling adds up and which listed words share that sum; it cannot tell you anything about a person that the spelling itself does not hold.