Psephy/Gematria Calculator

Written by Joel Kalvesmaki, May 2023, ver. 0.03

In ancient cultures that used the alphabet as the basis of a numeral system, a writer could play with the numerical value of the sum of the letters of any word or name. This technique, first called psephy, later called gematria, is first attested explicitly in the 1st c. CE, in Greek. As alphabetic numeration spread from Greek to other languages, psephic wordplay followed.

This application allows a user to type/paste any Greek, Syriac, or Hebrew text, and get its psephic value (for Arabic or Persian, please see the Abjad Calculator). Anything not in a supported alphabet is ignored. The example below shows the psephic value of the first line of the Iliad.