Love Calculator

Type your name and someone else's, press Calculate love, and get a "compatibility" percentage. It is a party game in the tradition of the name-matching games scribbled in the back of school notebooks, and the number means exactly as much as those did: nothing, but it is fun to argue about.

How the percentage is produced

There is no psychology or astrology involved. The tool converts both names to lowercase, joins them with a heart symbol, and runs the characters through a simple hash, a formula that turns text into a large number. It keeps the remainder after dividing that number by 51 and adds 50. That design has some entertaining side effects:

• Scores always land between 50% and 100%. Nobody walks away with a crushing 12%.
• The same pair always gets the same score, so friends can check each other's claims.
• Order matters. "Rahul" then "Priya" scores 89%, but "Priya" then "Rahul" scores 75%, because the letters are hashed in a different sequence.
• Capital letters do not matter, but spaces and spelling do. "Rahul " with a trailing space drops the same pair to 67%, and nicknames give completely different results.

FLAMES: the pen-and-paper original

Before apps, the classic Indian classroom version was FLAMES, where each letter stands for a relationship: Friends, Love, Affection, Marriage, Enemies, Siblings (versions differ slightly). This calculator does not use it, but you can play it by hand:

1. Write both names and cross out letters they share, one for one. For Rahul and Priya, the shared R and A go, leaving H, U, L and P, I, Y.
2. Count what remains: 6 letters.
3. Write F L A M E S and count 6 letters along it, looping back to the start, and strike out where you land (S).
4. Carry on counting 6 from the next letter, striking one each round: F, then A, then L, then E.
5. The last letter standing is the verdict. For this pair it is M, Marriage.

Run the same pair through both methods and you will see that the "science" disagrees with itself, which is part of the joke.

Ways to use it at a party or in a group chat

• Test every couple at a wedding sangeet and announce the "most compatible" pair.
• Compare a friend with three film stars and let the group vote on which score is most unfair.
• Check whether "Aishwarya" or "Aish" scores higher, then insist the better one is the official spelling.
• Pair it with the magic 8 ball for a round of equally unscientific predictions.

A sincere note

Real compatibility is built from trust, communication and shared values, and no arrangement of letters can measure it. Keep the game light, and avoid using someone's real crush to embarrass them in public. The names are processed in your browser and are not sent to or saved on a server.