Your Numbers, Read with Care

Your name and your birthday hold a handful of numbers that have followed people around for a couple of thousand years. Put yours in below and I'll tell you what they mean. You can choose Pythagorean (the standard western system) or Chaldean (the old Babylonian system, which only uses the values 1 to 8).

Your full birth name
Your birthday
Numerology system

Your name numbers change when you switch system. Your life path comes from your birthday alone, so it is the same number either way. Only the reading of it shifts.

What the four core numbers are

These numbers aren't guesswork. They're worked out from your name and your birthday using the Pythagorean system (the default, used by most western numerologists for the last hundred years) or the Chaldean system (older, based on the sound of each letter, and no letter is given a 9). Pick your system in the dropdown above. The sums run in your browser either way.

Life path: the single digit (or master number) you get by adding up your full birth date. It's the one most people mean when they ask "what's my number". It describes the long arc of a life: the theme that keeps coming back, the work, the shape of the days.
Destiny (or Expression): the sum of all the letters in your full birth name, reduced to a digit. This is the number of what you came here to do, the work your life path serves. It's less about the days and more about the calling.
Soul urge (or Heart's desire): the sum of the vowels in your name only. This is what you want underneath all the wanting, the thing you'd still reach for if no one was watching.
Personality: the sum of the consonants in your name only. This is how the world meets you on the first day: the surface, the introduction, the first impression.

How the calculator works

Everything runs in your browser. The numbers are worked out from the letters you type, with nothing sent to a server, no account, and nothing stored. The page uses the standard Pythagorean letter table: A to I map to 1 to 9, J to R map to 1 to 9 again, and S to Z map to 1 to 8. Or you can use the Chaldean table (values 1 to 8 only, given out by the sound of each letter). The number for each letter is fixed, and the same name will always produce the same numbers.

If a sum lands on 11, 22, or 33 (Pythagorean) or 11, 22, 33, or 44 (Chaldean), it isn't reduced further. These are the master numbers and are kept as two-digit values because they describe a more intense version of the single digit they share. A life path 4 is competent and steady; a life path 22 is the master builder, a much rarer and larger thing.

What to do once you have your numbers

Start with the life path. It's the single number that describes the most about the long arc of a life, and it's the one you'll recognise most easily when you read the page. From there, read the destiny. If it's the same as the life path, your work and your way are pointed in the same direction, which is a quiet kind of luck. If they differ, the difference is the conversation the life is having with itself.

The soul urge and personality often disagree, and the disagreement is useful. A personality 8 with a soul urge 6 is a person the world meets as a boss, who is privately trying to be useful to the people they love. That gap, once named, is a place to make conscious choices instead of unconscious ones.