The name Selwyn in Hebrew letters is סלווין. 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.
סלווין
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is סלווין. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 162 — the same as the Torah word בנימין, “Benjamin, son of Jacob”. That number points to Torah page 162 of 354 — in the portion Pekudei. What that portion is about: The accounting of the materials; the priestly garments are finished; the Tabernacle is raised on the first of Nisan; the cloud covers it. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Joshua 12:2. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Selwyn” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: סלווין. 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 סלווין gives 162.
162
The number 162 is the Torah word בנימין — «Benjamin, son of Jacob» (Genesis 35:18).
And they put the two wreathen chains of gold on the two rings at the ends of the breastplate.
This is from the portion Pekudei. What it is about: The accounting of the materials; the priestly garments are finished; the Tabernacle is raised on the first of Nisan; the cloud covers it.
The same number, 162, is given by these Tanakh names:
Benjamin בנימין
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) — 812. A Torah word with the same number is משבתיכם — “your dwellings” (Exodus 35:3).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 27. A Torah word with the same number is בכה — “to weep” (Genesis 21:16).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 63. A Torah word with the same number is חנה — “to encamp” (Genesis 26:17).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 652. A Torah word with the same number is מרבית — “increase, profit” (Leviticus 25:37).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 7172.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 622. A Torah word with the same number is בריתי — “my covenant” (Genesis 6:18).
The letters that come out are חכפפמט — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 237. A Torah word with the same number is בכירה — “the firstborn daughter” (Genesis 19:31).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 344.
The number 162 appears in the classical books 3 times across 3 works. The earliest mention is פרי עץ חיים שער חג המצות (~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 — 162. 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. סלווין has 6 letters: ס Samekh, ל Lamed, ו Vav, ו Vav, י Yod, ן final Nun. The first letter is Samekh, the last is final Nun.
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 סלווין 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
The Pentateuch has no verse that begins with ס and ends with נ. The custom allows the whole Tanakh — the Prophets and the Writings have 2 such verses. The first of them is Joshua 12:2:
סיחון מלך האמרי היושב בחשבון משל מערוער אשר על שפת נחל ארנון ותוך הנחל וחצי הגלעד ועד יבק הנחל גבול בני עמון
The name סלווין has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 162 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.
