Every name-number method maps letters to digits and sums them. There are three common mappings, and they disagree.
Ordinal: A = 1 through Z = 26.
Pythagorean cycles 1 to 9 across the alphabet:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A J S | B K T | C L U | D M V | E N W | F O X | G P Y | H Q Z | I R |
Chaldean uses 1 to 8 only, with an irregular mapping said to derive from sound rather than alphabet position, and it reserves 9 as never assigned to a letter.
Take MARIA.
That the ordinal and Pythagorean results match is not coincidence, and the reason is the most interesting thing on this page.
Repeatedly summing digits until one remains gives the digital root, and the digital root of any number equals that number modulo 9, with multiples of 9 giving 9 rather than 0. This is the old accountancy trick called casting out nines, and it works because 10 leaves remainder 1 when divided by 9, so every place value contributes its digit unchanged.
Now look at the Pythagorean table: it assigns each letter its alphabet position reduced mod 9. A is 1 and J is the tenth letter, also 1. R is eighteenth and gets 9, which is 18 mod 9 expressed as 9 instead of 0.
So the Pythagorean sum is congruent to the ordinal sum mod 9 — and since the final reduction is itself a mod 9 operation, the two systems can never produce different answers. Chaldean differs only because its mapping is not alphabet position mod 9.
A practical consequence: any anagram has the identical value, since addition is commutative. MARIA, AMIRA and RAIMA all give 6. Whatever the number is supposed to describe, it cannot distinguish between names built from the same letters.
Most traditions leave 11, 22 and sometimes 33 unreduced, calling them master numbers. Practitioners also distinguish the full-name value from the vowels-only figure and the consonants-only figure, and they disagree about whether to use the birth name, the current legal name, or the name you actually go by.
That last disagreement is worth sitting with, because it has no resolution within the system.
Nothing about your personality, future, compatibility or fortune. There is no evidence that name numbers predict anything about a person, and no proposed mechanism by which the Latin alphabet position of letters chosen by your parents could influence your character.
The reason readings nonetheless feel accurate is well studied and has a name. In a classic 1948 demonstration, students completed a personality test and were each handed what they believed was an individual profile. Every student received the same text, assembled from vague statements, and they rated it as highly accurate — averaging over 4 out of 5. This is the Forer effect, and it works because statements like you have a great deal of unused capacity or at times you are outgoing and at other times reserved are true of nearly everyone while feeling personally observed.
Add confirmation bias — remembering the parts that fit and forgetting the parts that did not — and a system with nine possible outputs describing eight billion people will produce hits constantly.
Treat this as what it is: a small piece of number theory with a long cultural history, and an entertaining thing to compute. It is not a basis for decisions about people, relationships, hiring or anything else with consequences.
Neither, in any testable sense. Chaldean is often presented as older and therefore more authentic; age is not evidence. They are different conventions producing different numbers.
Practitioners disagree, which is itself informative. If you are doing this for interest, try both and notice that you prefer whichever reading is more flattering.
Related but distinct. Gematria is a Hebrew tradition in which letters have established numeric values used for textual interpretation, with a long scholarly history. Modern name numerology borrows the arithmetic idea and applies it to Latin letters, which is a much more recent invention.
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