How your name is written in the letters of the Torah
Your name in the Torah: in Hebrew letters, as a number, with the verse it lands on and the sources. Computed, not divined. Free.
Your name
Placida
Tap the letters of your name and add up its number yourself
0
The number of your name
Placida (פלסידה) — The name comes from Latin “placidus”, which means “calm” or “quiet”. And the same number belongs to the Torah word פקדה — “oversight, visitation”.
The verse of your name
There is a sentence with which, by custom, a person answers when asked who they are.
Yours is this one.
פחז כמים אל תותר כי עלית משכבי אביך אז חללת יצועי עלה
Genesis 49:4
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, פ, and ends with the last, ה.
The custom is written down in the Kitzur Shelah and in Sefer Ben Zion: “say it regularly and never forget it as long as you live.” The Rokeach gives the reason in Chochmat ha-Nefesh: a person is asked their name, and whoever does not remember cannot answer. The verse holds the name for them. Siddur ha-Rashban puts it more plainly: children were made to learn their verse by heart — so that if they were taken and forgot everything else, they would still know who they were.
The week you were born
Add your date of birth and we will show which portion the world was reading the week you appeared, and whether it holds a word of your number.
How rare this number is
Torah portions with a word of number 189: 5 of 54
A word with the number 189 appears in 5 of the 54 weekly portions. That is a rare number: most numbers appear more often.
Fact. The letters of the name פלסידה add up to 189. Plain addition — you can check it yourself.
Meaning. There is a Torah word with the same number — פקדה (“oversight, visitation”). A matching sum does not mean the word is 'about you'; it is a reason to look at what in it matters to you.
A question for yourself. What in this do you recognise in yourself — and what would you like to strengthen?
Practice. This week: open the verse of your name, read it slowly three times and write down one thought that stays with you.
The tradition counts a name in nine ways, each giving its own number. 7 of the nine have a word of their own in the Torah. We showed one. The rest are in the full report.
A verse for what you need
Pick a theme — we show a Tanakh verse on it that contains a word with your name's number (189).
Our verse — for two
Type the name of someone close. We find the verse that begins with a letter of one name and ends with a letter of the other — your pair's verse.
My days of the year
The days when the number of the Hebrew date equals your name's number, and the Shabbat when the world reads the portion of your verse — straight into your phone's calendar.
Every morning in Telegram — your verse, how to read it in Latin letters, and one new word. Half a minute a day. After seven days the verse stays with you.
Your name in Hebrew letters is פלסידה. The name comes from Latin “placidus”, which means “calm” or “quiet”. The Spanish opera singer Plácido Domingo is a well-known bearer of the male form. This form of the name is used in Spain and Latin America. In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 189 — the same as the Torah word פקדה, “oversight, visitation”. That number points to Torah page 189 of 354 — in the portion Metzora. What that portion is about: Purification from tzaraat: two birds, cedar and hyssop; tzaraat of houses; discharges and purification. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 49:4. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Placida” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: פלסידה. Spelled by the Academy of the Hebrew Language rules for foreign names. If your name is spelled differently, correct the Hebrew spelling and the report is recomputed.
Adding up the letters of the name פלסידה gives 189.
189
The number 189 is the Torah word פקדה — «oversight, visitation» (Numbers 3:32).
And the priest that cleanseth him shall set the man that is to be cleansed, and those things, before HaShem, at the door of the tent of meeting.
This is from the portion Metzora. What it is about: Purification from tzaraat: two birds, cedar and hyssop; tzaraat of houses; discharges and purification.
Other ways of counting
The tradition counts the same name in several ways. The main one is above: each letter is its number. The other eight are old and checkable too; each gives its own number, and many of them have a Torah word with the same number.
Final letters as 500–900 (mispar gadol) — 189. A Torah word with the same number is פקדה — “oversight, visitation” (Numbers 3:32).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 27. A Torah word with the same number is בכה — “to weep” (Genesis 21:16).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 63. A Torah word with the same number is חנה — “to encamp” (Genesis 26:17).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 845. A Torah word with the same number is תהמת — “the deeps” (Exodus 15:5).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 11041.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 913.
The letters that come out are וכחמקצ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 264. A Torah word with the same number is ירדן — “Jordan river” (Genesis 13:10).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 735. A Torah word with the same number is המערכת — “the row” (Leviticus 24:6).
The number 189 appears in the classical books 2 times across 2 works. The earliest mention is פרי עץ חיים שער השבת (~1573).
The name פלסידה does not stand as a word in the Pentateuch — as with most names, including many Tanakh names from the later books.
The verse of your name
There is a custom: at the end of the prayer one says a Torah verse that begins with the first letter of one's name and ends with its last. For פלסידה these are פ and ה. The Pentateuch has 17 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 49:4:
פחז כמים אל תותר כי עלית משכבי אביך אז חללת יצועי עלה
This is from the portion Vayechi. What it is about: Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manasseh and all his sons; Jacob's death and burial in Hebron; Joseph's death.
Every letter of the name explained, the words and namesakes with references, the Hebrew date, the letter and tribe of the month, day 861 of your life (±1), the psalm by age, the attestations from the classical books — a PDF sent to your email.
The number of the day, every morning
Every date has a number too. Once a year it will match the number of your name — 189. The channel posts one number a day, one verse and the Torah page it lands on. Nothing after it, no mailing list.
Any name written in Hebrew letters is a number: פלסידה = 189. And every date has a number of its own. There is a day in the year when the two coincide.
Each Hebrew letter has a number; a word's number is their sum (alef 1 … tav 400). The page is the remainder modulo 354: the Torah divided into 354 pages of 861 letters, as the lunar year has 354 days. Everything can be checked by hand.