The name Verbena in Hebrew letters is ורבנה. 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.
ורבנה
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is ורבנה. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 263 — the same as the Torah word סגר, “to shut, close”. That number points to Torah page 263 of 354 — in the portion Balak. What that portion is about: Balak hires Balaam; the donkey sees the angel; blessing instead of curse: “how goodly are your tents, O Jacob”. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 1:29. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Verbena” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: ורבנה. 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 ורבנה gives 263.
263
The number 263 is the Torah word סגר — «to shut, close» (Genesis 2:21).
Come now therefore, I pray thee, curse me this people; for they are too mighty for me; peradventure I shall prevail, that we may smite them, and that I may drive them out of the land; for I know that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed.'
This is from the portion Balak. What it is about: Balak hires Balaam; the donkey sees the angel; blessing instead of curse: “how goodly are your tents, O Jacob”.
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) — 263. A Torah word with the same number is סגר — “to shut, close” (Genesis 2:21).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 20. A Torah word with the same number is היה — “to be, become” (Genesis 1:2).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 47. A Torah word with the same number is אולי — “perhaps” (Genesis 16:2).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1029.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 42565.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 941. A Torah word with the same number is משארת — “kneading trough” (Exodus 7:28).
The letters that come out are פגשטצ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 482. A Torah word with the same number is עבדתו — “its service” (Exodus 27:19).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 1046.
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 — 263. 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. ורבנה has 5 letters: ו Vav, ר Resh, ב Bet, נ Nun, ה He. The first letter is Vav, 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 ורבנה 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 ורבנה these are ו and ה. The Pentateuch has 822 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 1:29:
ויאמר אלהים הנה נתתי לכם את כל עשב זרע זרע אשר על פני כל הארץ ואת כל העץ אשר בו פרי עץ זרע זרע לכם יהיה לאכלה
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.
The name ורבנה has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 263 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.
