The name Richard in Hebrew letters is רישאר. 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.
רישאר
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is רישאר. A Germanic name made of ric, “ruler”, and hard, “strong”. King Richard the Lionheart of England lived in the 12th century. In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 711 — the same as the Torah word אשתי, “my wife”. That number points to Torah page 3 of 354 — in the portion Bereshit. What that portion is about: Creation in six days and the Sabbath; Adam and Eve in the garden; Cain and Abel; ten generations to Noah. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Deuteronomy 12:23. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Richard” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: רישאר. 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 רישאר gives 711.
711
The number 711 is the Torah word אשתי — «my wife» (Genesis 20:11).
And on the seventh day G-d finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.
This is from the portion Bereshit. What it is about: Creation in six days and the Sabbath; Adam and Eve in the garden; Cain and Abel; ten generations to Noah.
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) — 711. A Torah word with the same number is אשתי — “my wife” (Genesis 20:11).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 9. A Torah word with the same number is בוא — “to come, enter” (Genesis 2:19).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 72. A Torah word with the same number is חסד — “kindness, mercy” (Genesis 19:19).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 2741.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 170101.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 2142.
The letters that come out are גמבתג — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 448. A Torah word with the same number is במות — “Bamoth, place in Moab” (Numbers 21:19).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 1511.
The number 711 appears in the classical books 8 times across 5 works. The earliest mention is עץ חיים (~1573).
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 — 711. 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. רישאר has 5 letters: ר Resh, י Yod, ש Shin, א Alef, ר Resh. The first letter is Resh, the last is Resh.
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 רישאר 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 רישאר these are ר and ר. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Deuteronomy 12:23:
רק חזק לבלתי אכל הדם כי הדם הוא הנפש ולא תאכל הנפש עם הבשר
This is from the portion Re'eh. What it is about: “See”: blessing and curse; one place of worship; the tithe; permitted food; the three pilgrimage festivals.
The name רישאר has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 711 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.
