What's your LOVES percentage? 💞

Nobody knows who invented it. The LOVES game is playground lore, handed down from older kids to younger ones in the back pages of school notebooks. In 2016 Iain Johnston, a biologist at the University of Birmingham, wrote a short mathematical paper about it, “Endless love: On the termination of a playground number game” (arXiv:1602.03556). He describes it like this: count how many times each letter of LOVES appears in the two names, add neighboring numbers, and read the last two digits as a percentage. For the wider tradition of games like this, he points to Steve Roud's book The Lore of the Playground (2010).

House rules vary. Johnston notes that there are several variations, including some that count different letters, and in other languages the word changes: he mentions Norwegian ELSKER and Turkish SEVIYOR. FLAMES is a different game altogether: you cross out the letters the two names share, count what's left and use that number to knock letters out of FLAMES until one remains, and where you land tells you Friends, Lovers, Affectionate, Marriage, Enemies or Siblings (Wikipedia).

Korea and Japan build the same pyramid from different numbers. Korean classrooms count the strokes in each Hangul letter (Korean version); in Japan each kana becomes the number of its vowel, a=1, i=2, u=3, e=4, o=5 (Japanese version). Both of those versions on this site keep only the last digit of every sum.

This page follows the rule Johnston analyzes: when two neighbors add up to 10 or more, you write both digits. That one choice can change the result a lot, so it's fixed here, and the box under your result also shows what you'd get if you kept only the last digit.

• Count the letters. Write both names together and count how many times L, O, V, E and S appear. Capital and lowercase letters count the same, accents are ignored (é counts as E), and anything that isn't a letter is skipped. Double letters count twice: “Emma Ellis” has two E's, two L's and one S.
• Write the five counts in a row, in the order L O V E S.
• Add each pair of neighbors and write the sum underneath. If the sum is 10 or more, write both digits, so 7 + 5 becomes 1 2 and the new row gets one digit longer than usual.
• Stop when only two digits are left. Read them as a percentage.
• If the numbers never settle — a row comes back that you've already written, or the rows keep growing (this page stops at 60 digits or 100 rows) — that's Endless Love.

Because the counts come from both names together, swapping the order changes nothing here. That's different from the Korean and Japanese versions, where the two names are interleaved letter by letter and the order matters.

Johnston's own example. Alice has one L and one E; Bob has one O. So the counts are L 1, O 1, V 0, E 1, S 0.

1 1 0 1 0
 2 1 1 1
  3 2 2
   5 4

1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 0 = 1, 0 + 1 = 1, 1 + 0 = 1. Then 3, 2, 2, and finally 5 and 4: Alice and Bob are 54%, Push and Pull.

Now a pair where a sum reaches 10. Joe and Evelyn have one L, one O, one V, three E's and no S, so the counts are 1 1 1 3 0.

1 1 1 3 0
 2 2 4 3
  4 6 7
 1 0 1 3
  1 1 4
   2 5

Adding across the third row (4 6 7): 4 + 6 = 10 and 6 + 7 = 13, so the next row is 1 0 1 3. The row grows from three digits to four before it shrinks again, and Joe and Evelyn finish at 25%, Secretly Soft. If you kept only the last digit (4 + 6 → 0, 6 + 7 → 3), you'd stop at 03% instead, which is why this page shows both.

Because a sum of 10 or more adds a digit, a row can grow instead of shrinking. Most of the time it shrinks again, but not always. Johnston found two ways the game can fail to end: the pyramid loops back to a row it has already made and goes around forever, or the rows keep getting longer. He called both outcomes endless love.

It's rare with first names. Johnston reports that none of the pairs he checked among the 50 most popular UK first names failed to finish, but that adding surnames makes it more likely. This page found the same pattern: every one of its 10,000 first-name pairs finished, while about 1.4% of 10,000 sample pairs of full names (the same first names, each given one of 50 common US surnames at random) never settled (about 1.0% looped and 0.4% kept growing). Here the game stops after 100 rows or 60 digits and calls it Endless Love.

The screen draws everything for you, but this game is better with a pencil, especially in front of the other person.

• 1. Write both names and count L, O, V, E, S. Check off each letter as you count it so you don't miss doubles.
• 2. Write the five counts in a row with space between them.
• 3. Add neighbors and write each sum between and below them. If a sum is 10 or more, write both digits.
• 4. Keep going until two digits are left. That's the percentage.

Three mistakes are easy to make: adding numbers that aren't next to each other, writing only the last digit of a sum of 10 or more (that's a different house rule), and adding the final two digits together into one. If your paper and the screen disagree, it's probably one of those, or a letter you missed.

The percentage falls into one of 12 ranges, each with a name. There's no bad type. A low number isn't a verdict, and the lowest range is the funniest result in the game.

• 💞 Made in Heaven (96–100%) — Two names that were paired before you met.
• 💘 Meant to Be (90–95%) — Your names recognized each other first.
• 🍡 Stuck Like Glue (85–89%) — Put you side by side and you stay there.
• 🤝 Dream Team (80–84%) — Nothing the two of you can't handle.
• ✨ Same Wavelength (70–79%) — A look is all it takes.
• 🌸 Sweet & Easy (60–69%) — Small things, good days.
• ⚖️ Push and Pull (50–59%) — Half and half, so you keep wondering.
• 🐥 Bickering Besties (40–49%) — Arguing your way into being close.
• 🧲 Opposites Attract (30–39%) — Different, and that's the pull.
• 🌶️ Secretly Soft (20–29%) — Cool on the outside, all in on the inside.
• 🌱 Slow Burn (10–19%) — A match you build from here.
• ⚔️ Sworn Rivals in a Past Life (0–9%) — Which is exactly why it's fun.
• ♾️ Endless Love (no score) — Your names never settle.

The last two digits are each 0–9, so scores run from 0% to 99%; 100% can't come up. Made in Heaven is listed as 96–100%, but 99% is the real maximum. If the numbers never settle, that's ♾️ Endless Love, which never once came up in this page's 10,000 first-name pairs.

The “top N%” (or “bottom N%”) under your result isn't a comparison with other people who used this page. Your names are never sent anywhere, so there's nothing to compare against. Instead the page carries a table it worked out in advance.

The table comes from the US Social Security Administration's list of the 100 most popular boys' names and 100 most popular girls' names from 1926 to 2025 (SSA). This page played every boy–girl pairing of those names, 10,000 pairs, and recorded how many scored each percentage or more.

LOVES scores are not spread evenly. The counts are small, because most names have only one or two of these letters, so most pairs land between 20% and 60%. Across the 10,000 pairs the average was 41.6%; 34.5% scored 50 or more, 11.3% scored 70 or more, only 1.9% reached 90, and 4.8% scored under 10. That's why the same percentage can feel very different here than in the Korean or Japanese versions, whose scores spread almost evenly from 0 to 99.

This is entertainment. There's no evidence that the letters in your names have anything to do with how a relationship goes, and this page doesn't claim otherwise. It isn't numerology either; it's a playground counting game.

What this page does take seriously is doing the arithmetic right. The rules are all written out above, the worked examples come out the same by hand, and the pyramid on screen is the actual calculation. If you don't like your result, try first names only, add surnames, or use nicknames; within the rules, none of that is cheating. Just say which version you used when you show someone your 97%.

None of the 12 types is a losing result. Even 0% gets you Sworn Rivals in a Past Life, which is exactly why it's fun. The two of you decide the relationship, not five letters; the number is just something to talk about today.

First names or full names?

Either. Johnston's main tests used first names, but full names work too. They change the counts, can give you a different result, and make Endless Love more likely.

Does the order of the names matter?

No. The letters are counted across both names together, so “Alice and Bob” and “Bob and Alice” always get the same score.

Can I use a name written in another alphabet?

Type it in Latin letters, the way you would in an email. If you'd rather use Korean or Japanese names in their own scripts, try the Korean or Japanese version, each with its own rules.

Does choosing a relationship change the number?

No. The relationship you pick only changes one line of wording. The percentage and the type come from the two names alone.

Are our names in the share link?

No. The link carries one short code that packs the result type, the percentage and the relationship you picked, and the names can't be worked out from it. Whoever opens it sees the percentage, the type and the line for that relationship, but not the pyramid, which can't be drawn without the names. The result card you save, on the other hand, does show both names and the pyramid. It's saved only on your device, and where it goes next is up to you.

Where do the names I type go?

Nowhere. This page has no code that sends them anywhere; everything is calculated in your browser. The only thing left in the address bar is the result code, and “Try another pair” clears that too.

I got a different number on paper

Check three things: that you counted every L, O, V, E and S (double letters count twice), that you wrote both digits of every sum of 10 or more, and that you stopped as soon as two digits were left. If you play the keep-the-last-digit house rule, compare with the keep-the-last-digit box under your result instead.