The name Shem in Hebrew letters is שם. 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.
שם
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is שם. “Name.” Noah’s son, ancestor of the peoples of the Near East; the word “Semite” comes from him. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 340 — the same as the Torah word שם, “there”. That number points to Torah page 340 of 354 — in the portion Ki Tavo. What that portion is about: “When you enter”: the first fruits and the declaration; the stones on Mount Ebal; blessings and admonitions. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 9:6. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Shem” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: שם. 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 שם gives 340.
340
The number 340 is the Torah word שם — «there» (Genesis 2:8).
HaShem will establish thee for a holy people unto Himself, as He hath sworn unto thee; if thou shalt keep the commandments of HaShem thy G-d, and walk in His ways.
This is from the portion Ki Tavo. What it is about: “When you enter”: the first fruits and the declaration; the stones on Mount Ebal; blessings and admonitions.
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) — 900. A Torah word with the same number is שרת — “to minister, serve” (Genesis 39:4).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 7. A Torah word with the same number is או — “or” (Genesis 24:49).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 34. A Torah word with the same number is לבב — “heart” (Genesis 20:5).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1240.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 91600.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 640. A Torah word with the same number is שמש — “sun” (Genesis 15:12).
The word that comes out is בי. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 12. A Torah word with the same number is הוא — “he, it” (Genesis 2:11).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 440. A Torah word with the same number is שמנים — “eighty” (Genesis 5:25).
The number 340 appears in the classical books 25 times across 21 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 — 340. 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. שם has 2 letters: ש Shin, ם final Mem. The first letter is Shin, the last is final Mem.
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 שם appears in the Torah as a word 208 times. The first time is Genesis 2:8. Another 98 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 שם these are ש and מ. The Pentateuch has 17 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 9:6:
שפך דם האדם באדם דמו ישפך כי בצלם אלהים עשה את האדם
This is from the portion Noach. What it is about: The flood and the ark; the rainbow as a sign of the covenant; the tower of Babel; ten generations from Noah to Abraham.
«HaShem will establish thee for a holy people unto Himself, as He hath sworn unto thee; if thou shalt keep the commandments of HaShem thy G-d, and walk in His ways.»
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.
