Love Calculator

A Party Game Dressed Up in Numbers

The "love calculator" is one of the oldest gags on the internet, and the mechanism behind it is a form of name numerology: every letter gets converted to a number, the two totals are combined, and the result is compressed into a percentage. It has no predictive power over real relationships — but the arithmetic itself is exact and repeatable, which is what makes it fun to test with different name spellings, nicknames, or fictional pairings.

The Formula

Letter Value = position in the alphabet (a=1 ... z=26)
Sum = total of letter values in each name
Total = Sum(Name 1) + Sum(Name 2)
Love Score = Total mod 100 (a result of 0 becomes 100)

Non-letter characters (spaces, hyphens, apostrophes) are stripped before scoring, so "Mary-Jane" is scored the same as "MaryJane."

Worked Examples

Sample name pairs run through the formula
Name 1 (sum)Name 2 (sum)TotalScoreVerdict
Alex (42)Jordan (62)1044%Might take some work!
Sam (33)Taylor (91)12424%Might take some work!
Michael (51)Emma (32)8383%Great potential!

How the Score Bands Break Down

Verdict thresholds
Score rangeVerdict
85 – 100%Written in the stars!
65 – 84%Great potential!
40 – 64%Could go either way — depends on effort!
0 – 39%Might take some work!

Because the score is a remainder (mod 100) rather than a genuine similarity measure, two names with wildly different letter sums can land on the same percentage — that's the nature of the game, not a flaw to solve.

Note: This is a lighthearted name-numerology game for entertainment, not a scientific measure of compatibility. For a version based on birth dates instead of names, see the calculators below.

How to Use This Calculator

  1. Enter Your Name in the first field.
  2. Enter Their Name in the second field.
  3. Select Calculate to see the percentage score and verdict.

Related Calculations

Try the Compatibility Calculator for a birth-date-based numerology game, or the Soulmate Compatibility Calculator for a zodiac-element take on the same idea.