A name carries more than one number, and most calculators show you one of them without saying which. This page works out all of them for the same name, shows the arithmetic, and names the letter table each figure came from.
Everything here uses the Chaldean table, the one Cheiro popularised and the one most Indian practice uses. The Pythagorean figure is shown beside it, because the two disagree on most names and that is the single commonest reason another site gives you a different answer.
For Aarav Mehta the vowels total 9 and the consonants 21. Together they are 30, the full-name total. That holds for every name, and it is the quickest way to catch a site that has mislaid a letter.
Chaldean: A=1, A=1, R=2, A=1, V=6, M=4, E=5, H=5, T=4, A=1 = 30 → 3 + 0 = 3 → 3
Pythagorean: A=1, A=1, R=9, A=1, V=4, M=4, E=5, H=8, T=2, A=1 = 36 → 3 + 6 = 9 → 9
Aarav Mehta comes out as 3 in Chaldean and 9 in Pythagorean. Neither is a mistake. The two systems assign letters differently — Pythagorean numbers them by alphabetical position and uses 9, while Chaldean is based on sound and never gives 9 to a letter — so the same name legitimately produces two figures. If another site gave you a different number from ours, this is almost always why. Everything on this site, including the paid reports, uses Chaldean.
Across the 648 names in our corpus the name number is close to evenly spread — the commonest is 7 at 13.3% and the least common 1 at 9.0%. So no name number is rare enough to mean much on its own.
Two things behave differently. 11.6% of those names total 11, 22, 33, which some practitioners leave unreduced as master numbers and we do not — the name number page explains why and gives you both readings. And only 73 names (11.3%) total a multiple of nine, which is the exact reason adding a surname almost always changes your number.
Every calculator makes this choice and they do not agree. NakshamAstro and InstaAstro ask for the full birth name. AstroMedha tells you to use the name people actually call you by. Astrotalk splits it, using the popular name for Chaldean and the full name for Pythagorean. None of them is wrong, and the gap is not small: Aarav alone reads 2 and Aarav Mehta reads 3.
There is an exact rule for when it matters. Reducing a total is the same operation as taking its remainder on division by nine, so adding a second word leaves the number untouched if and only if that word's own letters total a multiple of nine. Mehta totals 19, which is not, so it moves the answer. Only 73 of the 648 names in our corpus — 11.3% — would leave it alone.
Our position: calculate the name in active use, because Chaldean reads a name as a sound that gets repeated rather than as a legal record. But calculate both and keep them labelled. They answer different questions, and quoting either without the spelling beside it is what makes two sites look like they disagree when they were simply given different words.
A name number describes the impression a name makes and the arithmetic behind it. It does not predict income, health or a marriage, and two people sharing a number share a tendency, not a life. Nothing on this page is a reason to change a name you are happy with, and every figure here can be checked by hand against the tables we publish on the methodology page.
The one from every letter of the name, reduced to a single digit. Destiny number and Expression number are two other labels for the same arithmetic. Soul Urge uses only the vowels and Personality only the consonants, so those are different figures answering different questions, not competing versions of the same one.
Almost always because it used the Pythagorean letter table rather than Chaldean. The two assign different values to the same letters, and Pythagorean uses 9 where Chaldean never does. We show both figures for your name so you can see exactly where they diverge. A smaller number of sites also leave 11, 22 and 33 unreduced, which changes the answer again.
Calculate the name people actually call you by, since Chaldean weighs the name in active use. Then calculate the full name too and label both. A second word changes the number unless its own letters total a multiple of nine, which is rare, so the two figures usually differ.
Neither outranks the other. Your birth number comes from a date that cannot change; your name number comes from a name you use every day and could change. A full reading weighs them together. Treat the name number as one thread, not the whole story.
Every table used on this page is published in full on our how we calculate page.