Pythagorean vs Chaldean Numerology: Two Letter Tables

Pythagorean vs Chaldean numerology comes down to one practical question: which number does each letter of your name carry? The Pythagorean table runs through the alphabet in order and gives every letter a value from 1 to 9. The Chaldean table follows the sound of each letter, uses only 1 to 8, and leaves the 9 out on purpose. Because the tables differ, the same name gives different totals. This guide sets both tables out in full, checks the Chaldean one against Cheiro’s own book, works one name both ways, and says plainly which system Starvela’s calculators use and why. Neither table is a measurement of anything. They are two conventions for turning a name into numbers, and it helps to see exactly where they part.

The Short Answer

Astronumero.org, a numerology publisher, puts the difference in one line each. In the Pythagorean system “the numbers of the letters are arranged in alphabetical order”, and “The Chaldean numerology system assigns the numbers to letters according to their sounds.”

In practice that means:

• Pythagorean: A is 1, B is 2 and so on to I, which is 9; then J starts again at 1. Every value from 1 to 9 is used.
• Chaldean: values are grouped by sound, so letters far apart in the alphabet can share a number (A, I, J, Q and Y are all 1). No letter is 9.
• Totals: a Pythagorean name total and a Chaldean name total are usually different numbers, and they often reduce to different digits as well.

The rest of this page is the detail behind those three lines.

Where the Pythagorean Table Comes From

The name suggests an ancient Greek origin, and that is only half right.

Pythagoras and the idea of number

The idea is old. Britannica says the theory behind numerology “is based on the Pythagorean idea that all things can be expressed in numerical terms”, and Wikipedia’s article on Pythagoreanism describes a school whose mathematicians “claimed that numbers were at the heart of everything”. Aristotle, as Wikipedia reports, wrote that the Pythagorean tradition practiced isopsephy, the Greek habit of reading letters as numbers.

The same article adds a detail that matters here: “the Pythagorean philosophers represented numbers graphically, not symbolically through letters.” They drew numbers as patterns of dots. So Pythagoras gave the system its philosophy and its name, but not the letter table that carries his name today.

From Agrippa to the modern table

The Latin alphabet was given number values much later. Wikipedia credits Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa with applying arithmancy “to the classical Latin alphabet in the 16th century”, in a place-value order of his own time. The table used now, A to I, J to R, S to Z, belongs to modern numerology, which Wikipedia says was shaped by Mrs. L. Dow Balliett, “an American writer who created the modern style of numerology” in the early 1900s. The word numerology itself is not recorded in English before about 1907. Wikipedia describes the result simply: in the Pythagorean method the letters of the modern Latin alphabet “are assigned numerical values 1 through 9.”

Where the Chaldean Table Comes From

The Chaldeans were the people of ancient southern Mesopotamia, who wrote in cuneiform, not in Latin letters. The table called Chaldean assigns numbers to the 26 letters of the modern English alphabet, so the name describes a claimed lineage rather than a document that survives from Babylon.

Cheiro’s table

The version in use today is the one set out by Cheiro, the pen name of William John Warner (1866 to 1936), whom Wikipedia describes as an Irish astrologer and occult figure of the early twentieth century. Astronumero.org calls him “the father of modern Chaldean numerology”. In Cheiro’s Book of Numbers he introduces the table with the words “This ancient Chaldean and Hebrew alphabet sets out the number or value of each letter.” and adds, of its usefulness, “It is the best system I know for this purpose”. He believed it had come down from the Chaldeans to the Hebrews. That is Cheiro’s claim, and no older source we read confirms it.

His reason for leaving out the 9 is part of the system’s character. According to Cheiro, “the number 9 represents the 9-lettered name of God”, so no single letter was given it. A name can still add up to 9; a letter just cannot be 9.

What we could check in his book

The ficha behind this page records a small piece of our own checking. We first read the scanned copy of Cheiro’s Book of Numbers held by the Digital Library of India, a London “seventh impression” that prints no date, although its text mentions events of 1933. In that scan the second half of his printed table, N to Z, is legible and the first half is not, so we worked backward from his own examples, the names he adds up letter by letter (Lloyd, George, Baldwin, Chamberlain, John, Smith), and every total came out right with the standard Chaldean values. That covered 24 of the 26 letters and left F and K. We then read a second scan of the same book, a revised edition reprinted in Bombay by D. B. Taraporevala by arrangement with the London publisher and printed between 1977 and 1985, where the whole table on page 70 is clear. It prints F as 8 and K as 2, and all 26 letters match the modern charts. The Chaldean column below is therefore Cheiro’s own, letter for letter.

Chaldean tables do not all agree

Astronumero.org notes that “The Chaldean numerologists are not unanimous” about the values, and gives an example: Walter Gibson, Cheiro’s contemporary, set X at 6, C at 2, H at 8 and Th at 9.

The older record goes further back than either man. Sepharial’s handbook The Kabala of Numbers (1911) prints two columns side by side, which he calls Hebraic and Pythagorean. As the scan of his table reads, the Hebraic column already puts A, I, Y, Q and J together at 1, the same five letters that Cheiro sets at 1, and it carries the values Astronumero.org attributes to Gibson: C at 2, H at 8, X at 6, Th at 9. His Pythagorean column, meanwhile, runs A, K and T at 1, the older Latin order of Agrippa’s era rather than today’s A, J and S. So “the” Chaldean table and “the” Pythagorean table each had rivals within living memory of their authors.

The Two Tables Side by Side

Here is every letter in both systems. The Pythagorean column is the table in Starvela’s code. The Chaldean column is Cheiro’s table as he printed it, which is also the version reproduced today.

Where each Chaldean value was confirmed: all 26 in Cheiro’s printed table (page 70 of the Taraporevala reprint; N to Z also in the older London scan), and every letter except F and K a second time in his worked names.

We compared the two columns letter by letter. Only 10 of the 26 letters carry the same value in both: A to E and J to N. The other 16 differ, some by a single step (O is 6 or 7), some a long way apart (I is 9 or 1, R is 9 or 2). The Chaldean column is also uneven by design: five letters share the 1, three or four share each of the values 2 to 6, two share the 7 and two the 8.

Same Name, Two Answers

A table only shows its effect when you run a name through it. Here is one fictional name, Maya Rivera, worked both ways.

Maya Rivera, letter by letter

Pythagorean. MAYA is 4 + 1 + 7 + 1 = 13. RIVERA is 9 + 9 + 4 + 5 + 9 + 1 = 37. Starvela reduces each name before adding, so 13 becomes 4 and 37 becomes 10 and then 1, and 4 + 1 gives an expression number of 5. Adding the raw totals first, 13 + 37 = 50, also reduces to 5.

Chaldean. MAYA is 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 7. RIVERA is 2 + 1 + 6 + 5 + 2 + 1 = 17. The total is 24, which reduces to 6. Cheiro would first read 24 as a compound number with a meaning of its own, and only then reduce it.

So the same name is a 5 in one system and a 6 in the other. The largest single cause is the Y: 7 in the Pythagorean table and 1 in the Chaldean one. The R’s add the rest, at 9 against 2.

Four names compared

We ran four fictional names through both tables. The Pythagorean result is what our expression number calculator shows.

Each cell shows the name’s total and the number it reduces to.

Not one of the four lands on the same number. Nora Lin even produces a master number, 11, in the Pythagorean system, a possibility the Chaldean one handles differently because it reads compound totals in their own right. Sometimes the two do meet: Cheiro’s own example, John Smith, comes to 35 and then 8 in his table, and to 8 in ours as well, by an entirely different route.

Other Differences Beyond the Table

The letter values are the headline, but three habits separate the systems too.

Which name you use

In the Pythagorean practice our calculators follow, the name is your full name at birth. Cheiro instead adds the name a person is most known by: in his example the statesman called Lloyd George is read as Lloyd George, not by his full birth name. For people who go by a nickname or a married name, that choice alone changes the result.

Compound numbers

Cheiro gives meanings to compound totals, the two-digit sums such as 24 or 32, before reducing to a single digit, and he reads the single digit as the person as others see them and the compound as the forces behind. Pythagorean practice generally reduces straight away, keeping only the master numbers 11, 22 and 33, which our guide to master numbers covers.

The missing 9

In the Chaldean table the 9 exists only as a total, never as a letter, for the reason Cheiro gives above. In the Pythagorean table it is simply the value of I and R.

Which System Starvela Uses, and Why

Our core name numbers are Pythagorean. The letter values in our calculator code are exactly the Pythagorean column above, the letter Y counts as a vowel only when no plain vowel stands beside it, and we keep 11, 22 and 33 unreduced. Our methodology page sets this out.

We chose Pythagorean for the core numbers for three reasons. It is the standard system in English-language numerology, so our results can be checked against the tables most readers will meet elsewhere. It follows the alphabet in order, which makes every result easy to check by hand. And the Chaldean table, as shown above, has more than one version, so offering it meant first choosing between Cheiro, Gibson and older columns.

We have now made that choice. The Chaldean name number on Starvela uses Cheiro’s own table, the column above, letter for letter: it adds every letter of the name, shows the compound total the way Cheiro reads it, and then reduces it to one digit. It sits beside the Pythagorean numbers in one tool, with a switch between the two tables, so you can run the same name both ways.

The same table feeds the soul urge number calculator (vowels only) and the personality number (consonants only). Birth date numbers, such as the life path, do not use letters at all, so the letter tables leave them untouched. Cheiro does weigh the date differently: his birth number is the day of the month, reduced, so in his example someone born on January 17 is an 8.

Is One More Accurate Than the Other?

Neither can be shown to be. Wikipedia defines numerology as “the belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and metaphysical phenomena or ideas”, and a belief has no accuracy score. What can be checked is the arithmetic, and on that point both systems are exact: give two careful people the same table and the same name, and they will get the same total.

So the honest way to choose is by the logic you find more meaningful. If order and simplicity appeal to you, the Pythagorean table is easier to live with. If you like the idea that a letter’s sound matters more than its place, and you are happy to pick a version, the Chaldean table offers that. Whichever you use, use it consistently, and read the result as a description to reflect on, not a verdict.