Names and Numerology

My late mother-in-law practiced the art of numerology in our family. Although I am not superstitious, I followed it in the naming of our four children here in the US.

My late mother-in-law had given my wife a formula based on numbers for predicting whether a marriage, a birth of a child or any addition to your household will bring good or bad luck or even death to your family or household.

My wife had followed this formula when we assigned names to our four children. I am not superstitious, but I follow it also, because I have witnessed several cases of relatives in the Philippines that have suffered early death, divorce or sickness because the combination of their baptismal names fall into the category of CONDENADO (meaning condemned or death).

There are five categories, BUENAS (good luck), DUDUSO (doubtful), PELIGRO (danger), MALAS (bad luck) and CONDENADO (condemned). I have a copy of the number values for the 26 letter of the alphabet and the numbers that are supposed to be lucky, doubtful, danger, bad luck and condemned. But my wife refused to give her permission that I divulge this in this article. But here is the essence of this pseudo science of numerology.

The 26 alphabet letters are assigned numerical values from zero to 26. Some of the letters have the same values. Eight letters are valued 12, four letters are valued 9, three letters are valued 18, and the rest of the letters are valued from zero to 26.

The letters in your Baptismal name are added. This sum tells the numerologist which of the above five categories your name falls into. Then the baptismal name of your wife is added. If the sum of your name and your spouse exceeds 30, you start again counting from 1. If you have a baby, the baptismal name of the baby is added to both husband and wife’s total. Any addition to the household, even household help must be considered especially if the maid, cook or gardener lives in your household.

So how will you know if the sum of all the names in your household will bring you good or bad luck?

There is a list of lucky numbers, unlucky numbers, doubtful numbers, danger numbers and condemned numbers. There are 7 lucky numbers, among them are 7, 9 and 11. There are eight unlucky numbers among them are 4, 8, and 29. There are 20 doubtful numbers among them are 5, 6 and 27. There are 8 danger numbers, among them 12, 15 and 23. There are 8 condemned numbers among them are 3, 13 and 30.

Let me cite a specific example. My name “David” has a numerical value of 30 or zero. From the chart of five categories it is a bad number. So my parents did not give me a lucky name. But if you combined it with my wife’s name, with a value of 21, our total is 21. The number 21 is doubtful. When our oldest son was born we made it sure that the combination of our 3 names is among the lucky numbers of 1,3,7, 9, and 11.

This numerology system is similar but not identical to the Chinese numerology system and practices.
For example, number 4 is a pretty bad number in Cantonese, for it sounds like death, but in this system 4 is a good number. Eight is a good number in Chinese, but a danger number in this system. Both 1 and 9 are good numbers in Chinese and in my mother-in-law’s numerology chart.

Curious? I am sorry I can not elaborate more on this. My wife says it will be bad luck to give details of this numerology activity that my mother-in-law had been practicing for years when she was still alive. Evidently, this has been passed from generation to generation and is believed to have originated from Spain. Have you heard a similar activity in the Philippines, UK or in Spain?