The name Elhanan in Hebrew letters is אלחנן. 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.
אלחנן
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is אלחנן. A Tanakh name: an Israelite (first in 2 Samuel 21:19; 4 mentions in the Tanakh). Meaning, per Strong’s dictionary (1890): “God is gracious”. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 139 — the same as the Torah word לקט, “to gather”. That number points to Torah page 139 of 354 — in the portion Tetzaveh. What that portion is about: “Command”: oil for the lamp; the priestly garments — the ephod, the breastplate with twelve stones; the consecration of the priests. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 36:27. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Elhanan” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: אלחנן. 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 אלחנן gives 139.
139
The number 139 is the Torah word לקט — «to gather» (Genesis 31:46).
With the work of an engraver in stone, like the engravings of a signet, shalt thou engrave the two stones, according to the names of the children of Israel; thou shalt make them to be inclosed in settings of gold.
This is from the portion Tetzaveh. What it is about: “Command”: oil for the lamp; the priestly garments — the ephod, the breastplate with twelve stones; the consecration of the priests.
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) — 789. A Torah word with the same number is תשפט — “you shall judge” (Leviticus 19:15).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 22. A Torah word with the same number is יחד — “together” (Genesis 13:6).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 49. A Torah word with the same number is מואב — “Moab, son of Lot” (Genesis 19:37).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 532. A Torah word with the same number is מצבת — “pillar, standing stone” (Genesis 35:14).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 5965.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 299. A Torah word with the same number is הארגמן — “the purple” (Exodus 28:5).
The letters that come out are תכסטט — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 498. A Torah word with the same number is מנחת — “Manahath, son of Shobal” (Genesis 36:23).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 815. A Torah word with the same number is תבואתו — “its produce” (Leviticus 19:25).
The number 139 appears in the classical books 1 time across 1 work. 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 — 139. 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. אלחנן has 5 letters: א Alef, ל Lamed, ח Chet, נ Nun, ן final Nun. The first letter is Alef, the last is final Nun.
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 אלחנן 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 אלחנן these are א and נ. The Pentateuch has 35 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 36:27:
אלה בני אצר בלהן וזעון ועקן
This is from the portion Vayishlach. What it is about: Wrestling with the angel and the name Israel; the meeting with Esau; Dinah in Shechem; the birth of Benjamin and Rachel's death.
«With the work of an engraver in stone, like the engravings of a signet, shalt thou engrave the two stones, according to the names of the children of Israel; thou shalt make them to be inclosed in settings of gold.»
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.
