The name Olaf in Hebrew letters is אולף. 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.
אולף
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is אולף. The name comes from Old Norse “Áleifr”: “anu”, “ancestor”, and “leifr”, “heir”. Olaf II, king of Norway in the 11th century, is the patron saint of that country. This form of the name is used in Scandinavia. In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 117 — the same as the Torah word אלוף, “chief”. That number points to Torah page 117 of 354 — in the portion Beshalach. What that portion 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 verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Exodus 23:27. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Olaf” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: אולף. 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 אולף gives 117.
117
The number 117 is the Torah word אלוף — «chief» (Genesis 36:15).
Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto HaShem, and spoke, saying: I will sing unto HaShem, for He is highly exalted; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.
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.
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) — 837. A Torah word with the same number is המשבצת — “the settings” (Exodus 28:14).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 18. A Torah word with the same number is חי — “living” (Genesis 1:20).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 36. A Torah word with the same number is אלה — “these” (Genesis 2:4).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 532. A Torah word with the same number is מצבת — “pillar, standing stone” (Genesis 35:14).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 7337.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 162. A Torah word with the same number is בנימין — “Benjamin, son of Jacob” (Genesis 35:18).
The letters that come out are תפכו — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 506. A Torah word with the same number is שור — “ox” (Genesis 32:6).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 278. A Torah word with the same number is עבור — “for the sake of” (Genesis 3:17).
The number 117 appears in the classical books 9 times across 5 works. The earliest mention is ספר קרניים (~1400).
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 — 117. 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. אולף has 4 letters: א Alef, ו Vav, ל Lamed, ף final Pe. The first letter is Alef, the last is final Pe.
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 אולף 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 אולף these are א and פ. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Exodus 23:27:
את אימתי אשלח לפניך והמתי את כל העם אשר תבא בהם ונתתי את כל איביך אליך ערף
This is from the portion Mishpatim. What it is about: Laws of the servant, damages, theft and pledges; “an eye for an eye” as compensation; the sabbatical year; “we will do and we will hear”.
«Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto HaShem, and spoke, saying: I will sing unto HaShem, for He is highly exalted; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.»
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.
