The name Esther in Hebrew letters is אסתר. 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.
אסתר
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is אסתר. From Persian “star”; her Hebrew name was Hadassah, “myrtle.” The queen who saved the Jews of Persia; her story is the festival of Purim. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 661 — the same as the Torah word הנרות, “the lamps”. That number points to Torah page 307 of 354 — in the portion Eikev. What that portion is about: “Because you will heed”: the land of seven fruits; the blessing after meals; manna as a test; the second paragraph of the Shema. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 23:15. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Esther” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: אסתר. 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 אסתר gives 661.
661
The number 661 is the Torah word הנרות — «the lamps» (Leviticus 24:4).
And HaShem will take away from thee all sickness; and He will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee, but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.
This is from the portion Eikev. What it is about: “Because you will heed”: the land of seven fruits; the blessing after meals; manna as a test; the second paragraph of the Shema.
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) — 661. A Torah word with the same number is הנרות — “the lamps” (Leviticus 24:4).
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) — 58. A Torah word with the same number is נח — “Noah” (Genesis 5:29).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 2546.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 203601.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1184.
The letters that come out are תחאג — 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) — 1147.
The number 661 appears in the classical books 10 times across 4 works. The earliest mention is שער הכוונות דרוש פורים דרוש א (~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 — 661. 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. אסתר has 4 letters: א Alef, ס Samekh, ת Tav, ר Resh. The first letter is Alef, the last is Resh.
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 אסתר appears in the Torah as a word 1 time. The first time is Γένεση 4:14.
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 אסתר these are א and ר. The Pentateuch has 15 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 23:15:
אדני שמעני ארץ ארבע מאת שקל כסף ביני ובינך מה הוא ואת מתך קבר
This is from the portion Chayei Sarah. What it is about: Sarah's death and the purchase of the cave of Machpelah; the servant seeks a wife for Isaac; Rebecca at the well; Abraham's death.
The name אסתר has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 661 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.
