The name Hodaviah in Hebrew letters is הודויה. 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.
הודויה
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is הודויה. A Tanakh name: the name of three Israelites (first in Ezra 2:40; 4 mentions in the Tanakh). Meaning, per Strong’s dictionary (1890): “majesty of God”. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 36 — the same as the Torah word אלה, “these”. That number points to Torah page 36 of 354 — in the portion Chayei Sarah. What that portion 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 verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 10:9. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Hodaviah” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: הודויה. 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 הודויה gives 36.
36
The number 36 is the Torah word אלה — «these» (Genesis 2:4).
So let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say: Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say: Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also; let the same be she that Thou hast appointed for Thy servant, even for Isaac; and thereby shall I know that Thou hast shown kindness unto my master.'
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 same number, 36, is given by these Tanakh names:
Leah לאה
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.
with finals and ordinal — 36. A Torah word with the same number is אלה — “these” (Genesis 2:4).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 27. A Torah word with the same number is בכה — “to weep” (Genesis 21:16).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 137. A Torah word with the same number is מצבה — “pillar” (Genesis 28:18).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 238. A Torah word with the same number is רחל — “Rachel, wife of Jacob” (Genesis 29:6).
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 119. A Torah word with the same number is מעט — “a little, few” (Genesis 18:4).
The letters that come out are צפקפמצ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 480. A Torah word with the same number is עדות — “testimony” (Exodus 16:34).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 490. A Torah word with the same number is תמים — “blameless, whole” (Genesis 6:9).
The number 36 appears in the classical books 19 times across 16 works. The earliest mention is ילקוט שמעוני (~1260).
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 — 36. 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. הודויה has 6 letters: ה He, ו Vav, ד Dalet, ו Vav, י Yod, ה He. The first letter is He, 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 הודויה 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 הודויה these are ה and ה. The Pentateuch has 26 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 10:9:
הוא היה גבר ציד לפני ה׳ על כן יאמר כנמרד גבור ציד לפני ה׳
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.
The name הודויה has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 36 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.
