The formula
each letter is worth 1 to 9 · add them and reduce to a single digit
Where it comes from
The Pythagorean table gives each letter a number from one to nine following the alphabet: A is one, B is two, and at I it starts again. The resulting figures are reduced by adding their digits until one remains, except eleven, twenty-two and thirty-three, which the tradition leaves unreduced and calls master numbers. The expression number comes from all the letters, the soul urge from the vowels only and the personality from the consonants only.
How to work it out by hand
- Give each letter its number from the Pythagorean table
- Add up every letter of the full name
- Reduce the result by adding its digits until one remains
- Repeat separately with the vowels and with the consonants
What is worth knowing
Accents and other diacritics change nothing: they are normalised to the base letter, because the table is the twenty-six letter Latin alphabet. That means the result depends on how the name is written — with or without a middle name, in the spelling on the document or the one in daily use — and that dependence is exactly why this is a game and not a measurement. The life path is worked out separately, from the date of birth, and is the only one that does not depend on spelling.