I've had a few questions about how to pick a craft name. There are several ways from just picking a name you like to being given a name by the coven that suits your qualities. The most common way is through birth number. Though many find it confusing here is the best way to explain this. It is how I chose the name Alice. On coven documents I sign it with an extra "E" at the end but publicly I leave it off so no one gets confused by the pronunciation.
When using the birth number method you must first find your birth number. Since this is a number between 1 and 9 you must reduce all double digit numbers to single numbers.
Begin by adding the numbers of your birth dates together. (we'll use mine as an example)
January 28, 1977 would be 01 28 1977
You can add it like 1+28+1977 and you would get 2006
or you can add it like 1+2+8+1+9+7+7 and get 35
Either way once you reduce those numbers down you get 8.
2+6=8 or 3+5=8
So my birth number is 8.
Now each letter of the alphabet is assigned a number from 1 to 9 some of these numbers will be repeated.
A B C D E F G H I
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
J K L M N O P Q R
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
S T U V W X Y Z
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
You will assign each letter of the name you pick a number.
I chose Alice which means honesty.
A=1 L=3 I=9 C=3 E=5
All together that equals 21 and can be reduced to 3, since my birth number is 8 I needed to play around with the lettering to come up with an 8. The best way I found was just to add another "e" to the end of it making it equal 26 or 8.
Another example is one I recently helped a current Dancing Moon Student Witch with was with the name Saoirse (pronounced Sear- Sha). What we did was use the sounding of the name to come up with Seoirsea.
Her birth day is May 10, 1984
Which gave us one of the hardest birth numbers to work with!
5+10+1984=1999 (which reduces like 1+9+9+9= 28, the 2+8= 10, and 1+0=1)
5+1+1+9+8+4=28 (which reduces like 2+8=10, then 1+0=1)
Her birth number is 1.
We then assigned each letter a number and played around with them to come up with
S=1 E=5 O=6 I=9 R=9 S=1 E= 5 A=1
1+5+6+9+9+1+5+1= 37
3+7=10
1+0=1
You can work with the name anyway that suits you, either by adding extra letters like I did with the extra "e", or by working it around the sounding of the name like Seoirsea did. Another way around this is with another coven member who changed the "I" in David to an "e" so that it was 9 instead of a 4. Another coven member removed the "I" from Candika so that she came up with a 2 instead of 3. There are many ways to play around with the lettering in a name to make it fit your birth number. The one thing to remember is that if you have your heart set on a name the right combination will easily be found but if the name does not work for you then you should chose another and try with that.
Blessed be,
Lady Alicee
P.S.
If you are having trouble with this you can email your birth date and the name you would like and I will help you! dancingmooncoven@yahoo.com