Two classic name games, every count shown
This page runs the two schoolyard name games exactly as the playground defined them, and it hides nothing about what they are: deterministic counting games, older than the internet, with no power to measure a real relationship. The LOVES percentage counts letters and adds neighbours until two digits remain. FLAMES cancels the letters the two names share and counts around its six words to a verdict. Both results are computed from the names alone, every counting row is printed so you can reproduce the result on paper, and the same names always give the same answer, because there is no randomness and no hidden ingredient. Entertainment, honestly labelled and fully auditable.
Disclaimer: This calculator gives estimates for general information only. It is not financial, medical or other professional advice. These are recreational counting games: the percentage is not a probability and says nothing about any real relationship, and FLAMES verdicts are playground tradition, not advice.
What this calculator does
It plays both games by their standard rules and shows the working. For the LOVES percentage, the two names are written with the word LOVES between them, the occurrences of the letters L, O, V, E and S are counted into a row of five numbers, and the row is repeatedly replaced by the sums of neighbouring pairs, until two digits remain and are read as the percentage. Whenever a pair sums to two digits, both digits enter the next row, which is the standard rule and the one that makes the game reproducible. For FLAMES, letters appearing in both names are cancelled in pairs, the letters left over are counted, and that count is walked around the word FLAMES, striking a letter at each landing, until one letter survives: F Friends, L Love, A Affection, M Marriage, E Enemies, S Siblings.
How to use it
- Names as written, one spelling per attempt. The games are spelling machines: Jack and John give different counts against the same partner, and nicknames, full names and middle names all change the arithmetic. That sensitivity is the game’s nature, not a discovery about the people.
- Read the counting rows. They are printed in full so any result can be checked by hand or replayed against a friend’s version of the game. Where two websites disagree, the difference is almost always the two-digit rule (both digits kept, versus the sum reduced) or which letters get counted, and the rows reveal it at a glance.
- The score is a game token. 18% and 98% are equally meaningless about the world; they differ only as game outcomes. The page prints the percentage because the game has one, and pairs it with this notice because honesty is the house rule: there is no dataset, no model and no measurement behind it.
- FLAMES verdicts are the punchline, not a prophecy. The game’s six outcomes include Enemies alongside Marriage by design; generations of schoolchildren have survived both. Treat a verdict as the joke it was invented to be.
- Your names stay yours. The calculation runs entirely in your browser; nothing is stored, logged or shared by this page.
How it is calculated
- LOVES: form the string NAME1 + “LOVES” + NAME2, letters only, uppercase. Count L, O, V, E, S in that order into a row. Replace the row by adjacent sums; a sum over 9 enters as its two digits. Repeat until two numbers remain; the percentage is the first times ten plus the second.
- FLAMES: cancel letters shared by the two names, one for one. Count the uncancelled letters, c. Starting from F, count c letters around F-L-A-M-E-S and strike the letter landed on; continue counting from the next letter, repeating with the same c, until one letter remains.
Worked examples
Jack and Jill, LOVES. The string is JACKLOVESJILL. Counts: L appears 3 times (once in LOVES, twice in Jill), O once, V once, E once, S once: the row is 3, 1, 1, 1, 1. Neighbour sums: 4, 2, 2, 2. Then 6, 4, 4. Then 10 (which enters as 1, 0) and 8: the row is 1, 0, 8. Finally 1 and 8: the game’s answer is 18%. Low, famous, and entirely a property of the letters: the same Jack against a Jill spelled with one L would play a different game.
Jack and Jill, FLAMES. The names share the letter J, cancelled once each: Jack keeps A, C, K and Jill keeps I, L, L, leaving 6 letters. Counting 6 around FLAMES strikes S first, then F, then A, then L, then E, leaving M, Marriage in the game’s traditional wording. The two games together, an 18% and a Marriage, demonstrate better than any essay that these are games: real measurement does not contradict itself for fun.
A longer pair, Romeo and Juliet. The LOVES rows run 2,3,1,3,1 → 5,4,4,4 → 9,8,8 → 1,7,1,6 → 8,8,7 → 1,6,1,5 → 7,7,6 → 1,4,1,3 → 5,5,4 → 1,0,9 → 19%, and FLAMES counts 9 uncancelled letters and lands on E. Literature’s most famous couple scores worse than most random pairings, which is the correct critical verdict on the method.
Reading your results
Read them as game results: reproducible, spelling-sensitive and about the names, not the people. The entertainment value is real (these games have delighted people for generations) and so is the boundary: a percentage produced by counting letters has the same evidentiary standing about a relationship as a coin flip, and rather less than a conversation. If a result stings, the remedy the tradition itself prescribes is to play again with a middle name included and watch the verdict change, which tells you everything about what the number was measuring.
Limitations
- No validity, by design and by fact. There is no research linking name-letter counts to relationship outcomes, and this page claims none. It exists because the games are cultural artefacts people search for, and it serves them with the rules shown and the meaning left honestly empty.
- Rule variants exist. Some versions reduce two-digit sums to a single digit instead of keeping both; some cancel letters differently in FLAMES. Results differ across variants for identical names. This page’s rules are printed in full, which is the only sense in which any version is the “right” one: the one whose rules you can see.
- Characters beyond A-Z are ignored. Accented and non-Latin letters drop out of the count, changing results for names that carry them. Enter the A-Z spelling you want tested; the games were built on the English alphabet and inherit its limits.
- Not a compatibility test of any serious kind. Genetic, medical, psychological and every other real compatibility question belongs to its own professionals and evidence. Nothing on this page speaks to any of them, deliberately.
Frequently asked questions
How does the love percentage game work?
Write the two names with LOVES between them, count how often each of the letters L, O, V, E and S appears, then keep adding neighbouring numbers together, carrying both digits when a sum reaches ten, until two digits are left. Jack and Jill play out in the worked example to 18%. The method is fully deterministic: anyone, anywhere, with the same spellings and the same rules gets the same percentage, which is the only impressive thing about it and the reason it survived as a game.
What does FLAMES stand for?
Friends, Love, Affection, Marriage, Enemies, Siblings: the six verdicts of the companion game. Shared letters between the names are cancelled, the rest are counted, and the count eliminates letters around the word until one survives. Jack and Jill leave 6 letters and land on M. The inclusion of Enemies among the outcomes is the game’s own confession that it is a joke with a counting mechanism, and it is presented here in that spirit.
Is a low score a bad sign for a relationship?
No. The score is the output of a letter-counting game and carries no information about any relationship, in either direction: Romeo and Juliet score 19% by the same arithmetic. Relationships run on what the people in them do, none of which is visible to the letters of their names. The page prints this plainly because some versions of this game dress the number up as insight, and that dressing is the one dishonest move available here; this version declines it.
Why do other calculators give a different percentage for the same names?
Because the game’s rules have variants, chiefly whether two-digit sums enter the next row whole or reduced to one digit, and small rule changes compound over the rows. This page states its rules in the method section and prints every row, so its results can be reproduced exactly and compared against any other version’s: where two answers differ, the rows show the exact step where the rules parted.
Related calculators
Method: the LOVES letter-count reduction and the FLAMES cancellation count, in the standard forms printed on this page, computed identically for every visitor. Recreational games with no predictive or diagnostic meaning. Last reviewed: 13 October 2026.