Onomancy.
The notion that an analogy existed between men's names and their fortunes is supposed to have originated with the Pythagoreans; it furnished some reveries for Plato, and has been the source of much wit to Ausonius. Two leading rules in what was called Onomancy were, first, that an even number of vowels in a man's name signified something amiss in his left side; an uneven number, a similar affection in the right; so that between the two perfect sanity was little to be expected. Secondly, of two competitors, that one would prove successful the numeral letters in whose name, when summed up, exceeded the amount of those in the name of his rival; and this was one of the reasons which enabled Achilles to triumph over Hector.