The hereditary number: your birth surname and what your family line passes on

A number you share with your family

Your first names were chosen for you; your surname, you received. It was there before you were born, carried by your parents and grandparents, and it will go on after you. That is why French numerology reads it on its own: the hereditary number (nombre héréditaire) describes the climate of the family you grew up in, what was valued there, what went unsaid, what was expected of each member.

Brothers and sisters carry the same surname, so the same hereditary number: they draw on the same inheritance. What sets them apart is the rest of the chart, their dates, their first names, and above all their active number, each one’s own way of carrying that legacy. Two children of the same family can live the same 8, one as a builder, the other as a rebel.

Reading this number is not about resigning yourself to your family. It shows the strengths you have without having had to learn them, and the creases you can choose to smooth out. It is a starting point, not a destination.

Your birth surname, even if you now use another

The hereditary number is calculated from the surname on your birth certificate. For a married woman who took her spouse’s name, that means her maiden name. The calculator on the numerology chart asks for the surname at birth, and says so in so many words.

A married name is not erased for all that: it adds a secondary vibration, felt mostly in social and working life, where people call you by it. If Camille took the name Bernard on marrying, that name would give B2 E5 R9 N5 A1 R9 D4 = 35, so 8: a touch of organisation and ambition in her working life, laid over the 3 of Martin, which remains her inheritance.

Double surnames, particles, articles: everything written counts

A double surname is added up as one name, without the hyphen. For a Martin-Dubois, Martin gives 30 and Dubois 25: 55, then 5 + 5 = 10, then 1. The site calculates the whole name; nothing stops you from counting each half by hand to see what each side of the family brings, here the 3 of Martin and the 7 of Dubois.

Particles and articles are part of the name when they appear on the certificate: they count. The name Yann Le Goff shows it strikingly. Goff alone gives G7 O6 F6 F6 = 25, so 7. With its article, L3 E5 adds 8: Le Goff is worth 33, a master number, the number of love that gives itself. A “de”, a “du”, a “van” or a “Mac” count the same way; in an O’ surname, the apostrophe does not count, the letter does. Special cases are covered on the page about the calculation.

Twelve family inheritances

Each value describes a legacy: what the family line gives from the start, and what it sometimes leaves you to lighten. The pages of the numbers, gathered on the numerology home page, give each one’s full portrait.

• 1: a line of independent people and pioneers, where you manage on your own; to lighten, the difficulty of asking for help.
• 2: a family of bonds and mediation, where peace at home comes first; to lighten, what goes unsaid.
• 3: a family of talk, celebrations and artistic gifts; to lighten, the lightness that sidesteps serious subjects.
• 4: a line of work well done, savings and land; to lighten, duty that always comes before pleasure.
• 5: families that move, relocate, trade and cross borders; to lighten, instability and hasty departures.
• 6: a family of home, care and responsibility; to lighten, sacrifice and emotional debt.
• 7: a line of researchers, believers or quiet people; to lighten, secrecy and isolation.
• 8: a family of entrepreneurs, property and authority; to lighten, money as the measure of everything.
• 9: a line open to the world, committed, sometimes uprooted; to lighten, forgetting oneself.
• 11: a family of intuitive people and callings; to lighten, nervousness and expectations set very high.
• 22: a line of builders who leave works behind them; to lighten, the pressure to succeed on the same scale.
• 33: a family of devotion, teaching or care; to lighten, giving without limits.

What your surname brings to your grid

The letters of the surname do not only give a number: they also fill your inclusion grid, the count of letters for each value. A family line can bring you an energy your first names lack, or leave an empty box that becomes a karmic lesson.

In Camille’s case, the only letter worth 2 in her whole name is the T of Martin. Without it, 2, listening and cooperation, would be missing from her grid and would become a karmic lesson: her family passes on, through a single letter, a sense of partnership. On the other hand, neither her first names nor Martin contain a 7 or an 8: her two karmic lessons come from neither side.

Roots in the birth chart

Astrology asks the same question elsewhere. In your birth chart, the fourth house, at the bottom of the wheel, speaks of the family home, of roots and of what the family has left you; Saturn tells the rules and duties handed down, the Moon the emotional inheritance. Setting your hereditary number beside these placements gives a two-voice reading of your family line.

In Cheiro’s correspondences, the most widely used, the 3 of Martin answers to Jupiter: the planet of growth, teaching and confidence. A 3 family readily passes on faith in the future and a taste for learning and storytelling. The 33 of Le Goff follows its root, 6, and answers to Venus: an inheritance of affection and devotion.

Martin and Le Goff, two inheritances read

For Camille, the 3 of Martin sketches a family where people talk a lot, enjoy getting together, use humour as a bond and encourage a gift for expression. Her own first name is a 1: she inherits that ease with words and adds decisiveness to it. What she can lighten is the family habit of scattering energy across a thousand projects begun.

For Yann, the 33 of Le Goff carries a more demanding inheritance: a line of devotion, where people have often looked after others, taught, supported, sometimes to the point of forgetting themselves. This master number is written 33/6: it is often lived first as a 6, home and responsibilities, before opening to a wider service. Yann’s first name is worth 9 (Y7 A1 N5 N5 = 18): it extends that legacy with an ideal turned towards the world. The portrait of 33 helps carry it without wearing yourself out.

Also calculate the hereditary number of your other parent’s birth surname: the family line whose name you do not carry often acts just as much, and you will recognise it in some of your traits.