Turning letters into numbers requires a cypher, and the practice has two in common use that do not agree. This is what each one says, and what happens when you run the same name through both.
What a Cypher Is Here
A cypher, in this context, is a lookup table: a rule that assigns a number to each letter. Nothing is hidden and nothing is encrypted. The word is used in its older sense of a figure or a numeral.
Charting a name means applying that table letter by letter, summing, and reducing. The arithmetic is trivial. The whole question is which table you used, and this is the part most name readings omit.
The Pythagorean Chart
The more common of the two runs one through nine across the alphabet in order and then starts again.
A, J and S are 1. B, K and T are 2. C, L and U are 3. D, M and V are 4. E, N and W are 5. F, O and X are 6. G, P and Y are 7. H, Q and Z are 8. I and R are 9.
The attribution to Pythagoras is traditional rather than documented; there is no surviving Pythagorean source for the table. It is called that in the literature, so we call it that here, with the caveat attached.
The Chaldean Chart
The second table runs one through eight and assigns no letter to nine.
A, I, J, Q and Y are 1. B, K and R are 2. C, G, L and S are 3. D, M and T are 4. E, H and N are 5. U, V and W are 6. O and Z are 7. F and P are 8. Nine is left empty, on the stated ground that it was held apart as complete.
The groupings are not alphabetical, which is the giveaway that this table came from somewhere other than counting off the alphabet. Its published rationale is phonetic — letters that sound alike sharing a value — though the sources for that are late.
The Same Name, Both Charts
Take the name MARINA. Under the Pythagorean chart: M is 4, A is 1, R is 9, I is 9, N is 5, A is 1. That sums to 29, which reduces to 11, which reduces to 2 — or stops at 11 if you keep master numbers.
Under the Chaldean chart the same six letters are 4, 1, 2, 1, 5, 1. That sums to 14, which reduces to 5.
Two is not five. The name did not change; the table did. Any published reading of a name that does not name its chart has left out the one piece of information you need to check it.
Which Letters Count
A second disagreement sits on top of the first. Some methods chart the full name, some chart only the vowels, some only the consonants, and some produce all three figures and read them as separate aspects.
There is also the question of which name. Birth certificate, current legal name, the name someone actually goes by, with or without middle names — each yields a different sum, and the literature endorses all of them somewhere.
Multiply the chart choice by the letter-set choice by the name choice and a single person has a dozen defensible name numbers. That is not a criticism smuggled in; it is a straightforward consequence of the rules as published.
Why We Print Both
It would be simpler to pick one chart and present it as the chart. Most pages do.
We think the disagreement is the most interesting true thing about name charting, and that hiding it makes the practice look more settled than it is. A reader who knows there are two tables can at least ask which one was used.
Nothing on this page is a reading of anyone's name, and none of it is offered as a basis for a decision.