The name Berend in Hebrew letters is ברנד. 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.
ברנד
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is ברנד. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 256 — the same as the Torah word קיצון, “outermost”. That number points to Torah page 256 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 Exodus 40:2. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Berend” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: ברנד. 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 ברנד gives 256.
256
The number 256 is the Torah word קיצון — «outermost» (Exodus 26:4).
Every thing that openeth the womb, of all flesh which they offer unto HaShem, both of man and beast, shall be thine; howbeit the first-born of man shalt thou surely redeem, and the firstling of unclean beasts shalt thou redeem.
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.
The same number, 256, is given by these Tanakh names:
Aaron אהרן
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) — 256. A Torah word with the same number is קיצון — “outermost” (Exodus 26:4).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 13. A Torah word with the same number is אחד — “one” (Genesis 1:5).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 40. A Torah word with the same number is חלב — “fat” (Genesis 4:4).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1003.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 42520.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 712. A Torah word with the same number is יבשת — “dry land” (Exodus 4:9).
The letters that come out are שגטק — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 412. A Torah word with the same number is בית — “house” (Genesis 6:14).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 1462.
The number 256 appears in the classical books 13 times across 8 works. The earliest mention is עץ חיים (~1573).
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 — 256. 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. ברנד has 4 letters: ב Bet, ר Resh, נ Nun, ד Dalet. The first letter is Bet, the last is Dalet.
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 ברנד 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 ברנד these are ב and ד. The Pentateuch has 2 such verses. The first of them is Exodus 40:2:
ביום החדש הראשון באחד לחדש תקים את משכן אהל מועד
This is from the portion Pekudei. What it is about: The accounting of the materials; the priestly garments are finished; the Tabernacle is raised on the first of Nisan; the cloud covers it.
The name ברנד has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 256 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.
