The name Hotham in Hebrew letters is חותם. 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.
חותם
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is חותם. A Tanakh name: the name of two Israelites (first in 1 Chronicles 7:32; 2 mentions in the Tanakh). Meaning, per Strong’s dictionary (1890): “seal”. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 454 — the same as the Torah word תמיד, “continually, perpetual”. That number points to Torah page 100 of 354 — in the portion Vaera. What that portion is about: “And I appeared”: the promise of redemption in four expressions; the first seven plagues, from blood to hail. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 7:20. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Hotham” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: חותם. 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 חותם gives 454.
454
The number 454 is the Torah word תמיד — «continually, perpetual» (Exodus 25:30).
And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning which I lifted up My hand to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for a heritage: I am HaShem.'
This is from the portion Vaera. What it is about: “And I appeared”: the promise of redemption in four expressions; the first seven plagues, from blood to hail.
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) — 1014.
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) — 1697.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 161700.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 890.
The letters that come out are ספאי — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 151. A Torah word with the same number is קנא — “to envy, be jealous” (Genesis 26:14).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 916. A Torah word with the same number is תירוש — “new wine” (Genesis 27:28).
The number 454 appears in the classical books 13 times across 8 works. The earliest mention is מדרש לפירושים (~1450?).
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 — 454. 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. חותם has 4 letters: ח Chet, ו Vav, ת Tav, ם final Mem. The first letter is Chet, the last is final Mem.
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 חותם appears in the Torah as a word 3 times. The first time is Exodus 28:21.
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 חותם these are ח and מ. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Genesis 7:20:
חמש עשרה אמה מלמעלה גברו המים ויכסו ההרים
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.
«And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning which I lifted up My hand to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for a heritage: I am HaShem.'»
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.
