The name Apolonia in Hebrew letters is אפולוניה. Below: how its number adds up, which page of the Torah it falls on and what verse stands there. Everything is computed, nothing is guessed.
אפולוניה
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is אפולוניה. This name comes from the Greek language: the word Apollon means “the god Apollo”. The name means “belonging to Apollo”; Saint Apollonia lived in Alexandria in the 3rd century. In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 188 — the same as the Torah word פקח, “to open”. That number points to Torah page 188 of 354 — in the portion Tazria. What that portion is about: The woman after childbirth; the laws of tzaraat on skin and garments — the signs and the priest's inspection. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 13:4. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Apolonia” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: אפולוניה. A name from the Tanakh — its Tanakh spelling is used. If your name is spelled differently, correct the Hebrew spelling and the report is recomputed.
Adding up the letters of the name אפולוניה gives 188.
188
The number 188 is the Torah word פקח — «to open» (Genesis 3:5).
And if the priest look, and, behold, the plague be dim after the washing thereof, then he shall rend it out of the garment, or out of the skin, or out of the warp, or out of the woof.
This is from the portion Tazria. What it is about: The woman after childbirth; the laws of tzaraat on skin and garments — the signs and the priest's inspection.
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) — 188. A Torah word with the same number is פקח — “to open” (Genesis 3:5).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 35. A Torah word with the same number is גבל — “to set bounds” (Exodus 19:12).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 71. A Torah word with the same number is מלא — “to fill” (Genesis 1:22).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 818. A Torah word with the same number is תחתי — “lowest” (Genesis 6:16).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 9998.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 953.
The letters that come out are תופכפטמצ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 725. A Torah word with the same number is תקטירו — “you shall burn” (Leviticus 2:11).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 422. A Torah word with the same number is שבעים — “seventy” (Genesis 4:24).
The number 188 appears in the classical books 4 times across 4 works. The earliest mention is מנורת המאור (אבוהב) (~1400).
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 — 188. The channel posts one number a day, one verse and the Torah page it lands on. Nothing after it, no mailing list.
Hebrew is written from right to left. אפולוניה has 8 letters: א Alef, פ Pe, ו Vav, ל Lamed, ו Vav, נ Nun, י Yod, ה He. The first letter is Alef, the last is He.
For an engraving, a sign or a tattoo, show the spelling to someone who reads Hebrew: transliterating a name is a choice, not the only option.
The name אפולוניה 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 אפולוניה these are א and ה. The Pentateuch has 49 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 13:4:
אל מקום המזבח אשר עשה שם בראשנה ויקרא שם אברם בשם ה׳
This is from the portion Lech Lecha. What it is about: “Go forth”: Abraham leaves Haran; the promise of land and offspring; the covenant between the pieces; circumcision.
Any name written in Hebrew letters is a number: אפולוניה = 188. And every date has a number of its own. There is a day in the year when the two coincide.
«And if the priest look, and, behold, the plague be dim after the washing thereof, then he shall rend it out of the garment, or out of the skin, or out of the warp, or out of the woof.»
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.
