The name Esau in Hebrew letters is עשו. 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.
עשו
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is עשו. Linked to “made, finished” (born hairy). Jacob’s twin brother (Genesis 25:25). Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 376 — the same as the Torah word עשו, “Esau, son of Isaac”. That number points to Torah page 22 of 354 — in the portion Lech Lecha. What that portion is about: “Go forth”: Abraham leaves Haran; the promise of land and offspring; the covenant between the pieces; circumcision. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 8:22. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Esau” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: עשו. 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 עשו gives 376.
376
The number 376 is the Torah word עשו — «Esau, son of Isaac» (Genesis 25:25).
And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and there was thick darkness, behold a smoking furnace, and a flaming torch that passed between these pieces.
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.
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) — 376. A Torah word with the same number is עשו — “Esau, son of Isaac” (Genesis 25:25).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 16. A Torah word with the same number is אחז — “to seize” (Genesis 22:13).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 43. A Torah word with the same number is גם — “also” (Genesis 3:6).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1441.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 94936.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 816. A Torah word with the same number is תשמעו — “you will listen” (Genesis 34:17).
The letters that come out are זבפ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 89. A Torah word with the same number is טף — “little children” (Genesis 34:29).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 502. A Torah word with the same number is בשר — “flesh” (Genesis 2:21).
The number 376 appears in the classical books 35 times across 10 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 — 376. 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. עשו has 3 letters: ע Ayin, ש Shin, ו Vav. The first letter is Ayin, 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 עשו appears in the Torah as a word 118 times. The first time is Genesis 12:5. Another 23 times it stands with prefixes — “and”, “in”, “the”.
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 עשו these are ע and ו. The Pentateuch has 7 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 8:22:
עד כל ימי הארץ זרע וקציר וקר וחם וקיץ וחרף ויום ולילה לא ישבתו
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.
A verse whose whole sum equals your name
ה׳ ימלך לעלם ועד
Exodus 15:18 · 15 letters in the verse
All the letters of this verse add up to 376 — exactly your name's number. The Pentateuch has 5,853 verses, and only 200 of them fall below 1000. Of the 2,980 names in our index, 80 match this way — about one name in thirty-seven.
«And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and there was thick darkness, behold a smoking furnace, and a flaming torch that passed between these pieces.»
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.
