The name Heather in Hebrew letters is היתר. 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.
היתר
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is היתר. The English name of heather, a low shrub with purple flowers that covers the hills of Scotland. A girl's name since the 1880s. In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 615 — the same as the Torah word אחרות, “other”. That number points to Torah page 261 of 354 — in the portion Chukat. What that portion is about: The red heifer; Miriam's death; water from the rock and the striking with the staff; Aaron's death; the bronze serpent. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Exodus 14:12. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Heather” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: היתר. 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 היתר gives 615.
615
The number 615 is the Torah word אחרות — «other» (Genesis 29:27).
And HaShem said unto Moses: 'Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he seeth it, shall live.'
This is from the portion Chukat. What it is about: The red heifer; Miriam's death; water from the rock and the striking with the staff; Aaron's death; the bronze serpent.
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) — 615. A Torah word with the same number is אחרות — “other” (Genesis 29:27).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 12. A Torah word with the same number is הוא — “he, it” (Genesis 2:11).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 57. A Torah word with the same number is מזבח — “altar” (Genesis 8:20).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 2360.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 200125.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1050.
The letters that come out are צמאג — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 134. A Torah word with the same number is פדן — “Paddan-aram” (Genesis 25:20).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 942.
The number 615 appears in the classical books 6 times across 6 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 — 615. 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. היתר has 4 letters: ה He, י Yod, ת Tav, ר Resh. The first letter is He, 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 היתר 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 היתר these are ה and ר. The Pentateuch has 4 such verses. The first of them is Exodus 14:12:
הלא זה הדבר אשר דברנו אליך במצרים לאמר חדל ממנו ונעבדה את מצרים כי טוב לנו עבד את מצרים ממתנו במדבר
This is from the portion Beshalach. What it is about: The parting of the sea and the song of Moses and Miriam; manna and quail; water from the rock; the war with Amalek.
The name היתר has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 615 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.
