The name Joshua in Hebrew letters is יהושע. 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.
יהושע
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is יהושע. “The Lord is salvation.” Moses’ disciple who led the people into the Land; Moses himself gave him this name instead of Hoshea (Numbers 13:16). Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 391 — the same as the Torah word ישועה, “salvation”. That number points to Torah page 37 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 31:29. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Joshua” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: יהושע. 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 יהושע gives 391.
391
The number 391 is the Torah word ישועה — «salvation» (Genesis 49:18).
And the man came into the house, and he ungirded the camels; and he gave straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet and the feet of the men that were with him.
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.
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) — 391. A Torah word with the same number is ישועה — “salvation” (Genesis 49:18).
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) — 58. A Torah word with the same number is נח — “Noah” (Genesis 5:29).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1511.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 95061.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 758. A Torah word with the same number is נחשת — “copper, bronze” (Genesis 4:22).
The letters that come out are מצפבז — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 219. A Torah word with the same number is טהרה — “purification” (Leviticus 12:4).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 528. A Torah word with the same number is נחלתם — “their inheritance” (Numbers 34:14).
The number 391 appears in the classical books 7 times across 5 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 — 391. 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. יהושע has 5 letters: י Yod, ה He, ו Vav, ש Shin, ע Ayin. The first letter is Yod, the last is Ayin.
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 יהושע appears in the Torah as a word 16 times. The first time is Exodus 17:9. Another 10 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 יהושע these are י and ע. The Pentateuch has 2 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 31:29:
יש לאל ידי לעשות עמכם רע ואלהי אביכם אמש אמר אלי לאמר השמר לך מדבר עם יעקב מטוב עד רע
This is from the portion Vayetzei. What it is about: The dream of the ladder to heaven; Jacob with Laban: Leah and Rachel; eleven sons are born; the return.
«And the man came into the house, and he ungirded the camels; and he gave straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet and the feet of the men that were with him.»
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.
