The name Donna in Hebrew letters is דונה. 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.
דונה
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is דונה. From the Italian donna, “lady”, which goes back to the Latin domina. A first name in the United States since the 20th century. In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 65 — the same as the Torah word אדני, “my Lord”. That number points to Torah page 65 of 354 — in the portion Vayeshev. What that portion is about: Joseph's dreams and his sale by his brothers; Judah and Tamar; Joseph in Potiphar's house and in prison; the dreams of the butler and the baker. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Leviticus 4:2. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Donna” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: דונה. 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 דונה gives 65.
65
The number 65 is the Torah word אדני — «my Lord» (Genesis 15:2).
Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into one of the pits, and we will say: An evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreams.'
This is from the portion Vayeshev. What it is about: Joseph's dreams and his sale by his brothers; Judah and Tamar; Joseph in Potiphar's house and in prison; the dreams of the butler and the baker.
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) — 65. A Torah word with the same number is אדני — “my Lord” (Genesis 15:2).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 20. A Torah word with the same number is היה — “to be, become” (Genesis 1:2).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 29. A Torah word with the same number is דכה — “crushed” (Deuteronomy 23:2).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 241. A Torah word with the same number is אמר — “to say” (Genesis 1:3).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 2577.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 139. A Torah word with the same number is לקט — “to gather” (Genesis 31:46).
The letters that come out are קפטצ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 279. A Torah word with the same number is וארבע — “and four” (Genesis 11:13).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 558. A Torah word with the same number is ומצותיו — “and his commandments” (Deuteronomy 6:2).
The number 65 appears in the classical books 129 times across 45 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 — 65. 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. דונה has 4 letters: ד Dalet, ו Vav, נ Nun, ה He. The first letter is Dalet, 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 דונה 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 דונה these are ד and ה. The Pentateuch has 9 such verses. The first of them is Leviticus 4:2:
דבר אל בני ישראל לאמר נפש כי תחטא בשגגה מכל מצות ה׳ אשר לא תעשינה ועשה מאחת מהנה
This is from the portion Vayikra. What it is about: “And He called”: the burnt, grain, peace, sin and guilt offerings — the order of the sacrifices.
The name דונה has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 65 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.
