The Birth First Name number is one of the three name-part totals, first, middle and last, from which the fuller Expression number of the whole name is built. It is found by converting each letter of the given name to a digit on the Pythagorean chart, in which A to I are one to nine and the sequence then repeats, and reducing the sum. Numerologists read it as the number of the self one presents first, the working personality of the name a person answers to daily, the most public of the three name parts. Because most people are called chiefly by their first name, this total is treated as an especially active influence, the everyday face of the name.
Cheiro's Book of Numbers, published in 1926, and Florence Campbell's Your Days Are Numbered, published in 1931, both built on Balliett's 1908 chart without disturbing its basic method, an English or Latin-alphabet name run through the same nine-digit cycle. Juno Jordan's Numerology: The Romance in Your Name, appearing in 1965, is usually credited with settling the now-standard convention of reading the first, middle and last name totals separately before combining them into the Expression, the three-part split this atlas's Birth First Name, Birth Middle Name and Birth Last Name entries follow.