What is abjad, and how is it worked out?

Where it comes from

Abjad is an old system that ties each of the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet to a number: alef is 1, beh 2, jim 3, and so on up to ghain, which is 1000. The name comes from its first four letters.

How it is worked out

Read the letters of a name one by one and add their numbers. "Ali" is 70 + 30 + 10 = 110. Letters that are not in the Arabic alphabet — پ چ ژ گ — have no abjad value and count as 0.

What the number is for

The number of a name feeds the Sarketab reading, the match of two names, the twin name and the frequency of a name. Type any name into the abjad calculator to see its number; a name in English is read as its Persian equivalent.