Number equivalents and unicode entities of the (22+5) letters of the Hebrew alphabet

Axel Drefahl - July 2014         Tweet

The Hebrew alphabet consists of twenty-two letters [1-3]. Each letter has a numerical value and letters can be combined to represent numbers. The following table shows the number equivalent of each letter—and the unicode entity for the use of hebrew letters in HTML documents.

There are five more letters—the sofit (pronounced “so-feet”) symbols [4]. These special letter forms are used only at the end of a word. They, too, represent numbers, which, along with the symbol and name of their cousin letter, are shown here:

The Hebrew numeral notations for 21 and 99 can be interpreted as 1 + 20 (Aleph + Kaf) and 9 + 90 (Tet + Tsadi), respectively. Since Hebrew is read from right to left, however, the numbers are read as 20 + 1 and 90 + 9.

By decorating Hebrew letters, numbers higher than 900 (encoded by the sofit Tsadi) can be build. Joseph Mazur explains [3]:

To represent thousands, one would start from the beginning [of the Hebrew alphabet] and place two dots above the letter. So $\ddot{א}$ would represent 1,000; $\ddot{ב}$ would reprent 2,000, and so on.

The system of Hebrew numerals is a quasi-decimal alphabetic numeral system. It is a flexible place-value system—differing from “our” strict base-ten number system in that it applies more than ten “digits” without having a cipher for zero. Further, letter combinations for certain numbers are rearranged or redefined, when the systematic numeral representation coincidences with the spelling of a word with a particular connation such as the name of God or a demon.

References and related pages