A Modern and Orthographic Measure

Like the whole apparatus of name numerology, the Birth First Name number is a product of the American systems of around 1900, the Balliett and Jordan tradition conventionally but inaccurately called Pythagorean. Because it depends on the exact spelling of the name in the Latin alphabet, the number it yields is a property of modern orthography and has no equivalent in any other script, a point worth keeping in view when the method is described as ancient. Practitioners debate whether the name given at birth or the name currently used should govern; the convention followed here takes the birth name as the fixed root, with adopted and married names read as overlays upon it.

The label Pythagorean is the system's own claim rather than a documented descent. Walter Burkert's study of the Pythagorean tradition finds no demonstrable line from the historical Pythagoras, active in the sixth century BCE and concerned with religion rather than arithmetic, to any letter-value chart, which was assembled in the United States after 1900. Underwood Dudley's critical survey, Numerology: Or What Pythagoras Wrought, examines what such readings are sold for and concludes that numbers of this kind have power over minds, not over events; the scholarly verdict on the system's claimed ancient pedigree is that it has been largely abandoned as a comparative category.