The name Columba in Hebrew letters is קולומבה. 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.
קולומבה
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is קולומבה. Columba is a personal name of Latin origin: it comes from the word columba, which means “dove”. Saint Columba, an Irish monk, founded a monastery on the island of Iona in 563. 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 13:17. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Columba” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: קולומבה. 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 קולומבה 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) — 905.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 12601.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1039.
The letters that come out are דפכפישצ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 584. A Torah word with the same number is פקדת — “oversight of” (Numbers 3:32).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 782. A Torah word with the same number is בשמתם — “by their names” (Genesis 25:13).
The number 189 appears in the classical books 2 times across 2 works. The earliest mention is פרי עץ חיים שער השבת (~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 — 189. 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. קולומבה has 7 letters: ק Qof, ו Vav, ל Lamed, ו Vav, מ Mem, ב Bet, ה He. The first letter is Qof, 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 קולומבה 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 קולומבה these are ק and ה. The Pentateuch has 14 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 13:17:
קום התהלך בארץ לארכה ולרחבה כי לך אתננה
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: קולומבה = 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.
