The name Nerissa in Hebrew letters is נריססה. 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.
נריססה
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is נריססה. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 385 — the same as the Torah word שפה, “lip, language”. That number points to Torah page 31 of 354 — in the portion Vayera. What that portion is about: Three visitors at Abraham's tent; the plea for Sodom; the birth of Isaac; the binding of Isaac on Mount Moriah. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Leviticus 22:8. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Nerissa” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: נריססה. 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 נריססה gives 385.
385
The number 385 is the Torah word שפה — «lip, language» (Genesis 11:1).
And G-d said unto Abraham: 'Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah saith unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall seed be called to thee.
This is from the portion Vayera. What it is about: Three visitors at Abraham's tent; the plea for Sodom; the birth of Isaac; the binding of Isaac on Mount Moriah.
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) — 385. A Torah word with the same number is שפה — “lip, language” (Genesis 11:1).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 25. A Torah word with the same number is כה — “thus, so” (Genesis 15:5).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 79. A Torah word with the same number is עדה — “congregation” (Exodus 12:3).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1570.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 49825.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1645.
The letters that come out are טגמחחצ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 158. A Torah word with the same number is ספיח — “aftergrowth” (Leviticus 25:5).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 882.
The number 385 appears in the classical books 40 times across 18 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 — 385. 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. נריססה has 6 letters: נ Nun, ר Resh, י Yod, ס Samekh, ס Samekh, ה He. The first letter is Nun, 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 נריססה 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 נריססה these are נ and ה. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Leviticus 22:8:
נבלה וטרפה לא יאכל לטמאה בה אני ה׳
This is from the portion Emor. What it is about: Laws of the priests; animals without blemish; the calendar of festivals — from the Sabbath to Sukkot; the lamp and the showbread.
Any name written in Hebrew letters is a number: נריססה = 385. And every date has a number of its own. There is a day in the year when the two coincide.
«And G-d said unto Abraham: 'Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah saith unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall seed be called to thee.»
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.
