First vowel

Meaning

The first vowel is the first vowel of the first name. In numerology, vowels stand for the inner life. Their sum over the whole name is the Soul Urge, what a person wants deep down. The first vowel is the first of those letters, a small window onto the same inner side.

Ulune reads it as a glimpse of the inner self: how a person reacts when no one is looking.

Only six letters can take this place: A, E, I, O, U, and Y when it sounds as a vowel. Each has its own character, given in the table below.

The first vowel is one of the three stones of the first name, with the cornerstone and the capstone. Sometimes the first vowel is the cornerstone itself, as in Anna or Élodie. Then the first step and the inner reaction share one letter and one character.

In practice

Take a made-up person, Yolanda Mary Kyle, born 29 November 1984. Her first name starts with Y. Here Y comes first and stands before a vowel, so by Hans Decoz’s rule it sounds as a consonant. The first vowel is the next one, O, worth 6.

Ulune’s reading for O: principles and devotion, responsible, patient and protective, sometimes rigid about what is right. As a first vowel, numerology reads this as her private reaction. Before anything else, she would weigh what is fair and who needs looking after.

Her value 6 links the first vowel to the 6, the number of responsibility and care. Her cornerstone is Y and her capstone A.

In a name like Bryan, things go the other way. The Y stands between a consonant and a vowel, with no vowel before it, so it is the vowel of its syllable. Bryan’s first vowel is Y.

Origin and history

The first vowel belongs to modern name numerology. Matthew Oliver Goodwin’s guide (1981) gives a chapter to the first letter and the first vowel, read as a person’s approach to experience. Hans Decoz, whose rules Ulune follows, lists the first vowel with the cornerstone and capstone in the book he wrote with Tom Monte (1994).

How Ulune calculates it

• Ulune takes the first word of the full name at birth, or else of the chart’s own typed name. Accents are dropped first.
• A, E, I, O and U are always vowels. W never is.
• Each Y is set by Hans Decoz’s rule, from its neighbours in the same name. Alone, it is a vowel.
• First in the name, a Y is a vowel before a consonant (Yvonne), a consonant before a vowel (Yolanda).
• Last in the name, it is a vowel after a consonant (Barry), a consonant after a vowel (Mickey).
• Between two consonants it is a vowel (Kyle). After a vowel it goes with it, as a consonant (Taylor).
• Between a consonant and a vowel, it is a vowel when no vowel comes before it in the name (Ryan, Bryan), a consonant otherwise (Tanya).
• Each Y can be switched by hand under the wheel, and the first vowel follows.
• A first name with no vowel, such as a single initial, has no first vowel. Ulune shows “none”.

Correspondences

The first vowel is one of six letters. Each is summed up here in Ulune’s own words.

The related positions are the cornerstone and the capstone, and the Soul Urge, the sum of every vowel in the name.