The name Arnaud in Hebrew letters is ארנו. 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.
ארנו
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is ארנו. The French form of Arnold, from Old German arn “eagle” and wald “rule”. It has been used in France since the Middle Ages and is still common there. In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 257 — the same as the Torah word ארון, “ark, coffin”. That number points to Torah page 257 of 354 — in the portion Korach. What that portion is about: Korah's rebellion; Aaron's staff blossoms; the duties of the priests and Levites; the priestly gifts. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 9:4. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Arnaud” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: ארנו. 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 ארנו gives 257.
257
The number 257 is the Torah word ארון — «ark, coffin» (Genesis 50:26).
Out of all that is given you ye shall set apart all of that which is due unto HaShem, of all the best thereof, even the hallowed part thereof out of it.
This is from the portion Korach. What it is about: Korah's rebellion; Aaron's staff blossoms; the duties of the priests and Levites; the priestly gifts.
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) — 257. A Torah word with the same number is ארון — “ark, coffin” (Genesis 50:26).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 14. A Torah word with the same number is יד — “hand” (Genesis 3:22).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 41. A Torah word with the same number is אם — “if” (Genesis 4:7).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1012. A Torah word with the same number is תרבית — “interest, increase” (Leviticus 25:36).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 42537.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 710. A Torah word with the same number is שית — “to put, set” (Genesis 3:15).
The letters that come out are תגטפ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 492. A Torah word with the same number is סבלת — “burdens” (Exodus 6:6).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 739. A Torah word with the same number is למסגרתו — “for its rim” (Exodus 25:25).
The number 257 appears in the classical books 10 times across 7 works. The earliest mention is בעל הטורים על התורה (~1300).
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 — 257. 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. ארנו has 4 letters: א Alef, ר Resh, נ Nun, ו Vav. The first letter is Alef, the last is Vav.
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 ארנו 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 ארנו these are א and ו. The Pentateuch has 55 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 9:4:
אך בשר בנפשו דמו לא תאכלו
This is from the portion Noach. What it is about: The flood and the ark; the rainbow as a sign of the covenant; the tower of Babel; ten generations from Noah to Abraham.
The name ארנו has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 257 is not among them. Half of all names are like this — neither good nor bad, just a fact of counting.
Add a date of birth and the verse of meeting from that week's portion is added to the reading.
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.
