The Name Compatibility Calculator plays the classic FLAMES game — the playground favourite that turns two names into a relationship verdict: Friends, Lovers, Affectionate, Marriage, Enemies or Siblings.
How FLAMES works
The game has three steps, exactly as you’d do it on paper:
- Cancel common letters. Strike out every letter the two names share, one-for-one.
- Count what’s left. Add up the remaining, uncancelled letters in both names.
- Eliminate around FLAMES. Using that count, repeatedly cross out letters of the word FLAMES, looping around, until a single letter survives.
The surviving letter is your result. Because the steps are fully deterministic, the same two names always produce the same answer — there’s no randomness.
A worked example by hand
Suppose the two names are Alex and Sam.
Step 1 — cancel shared letters:
Write out all the letters: A, L, E, X, S, A, M. Look for letters that appear in both names. The letter A appears in both Alex and Sam, so cancel one A from each name. After cancellation: A, L, E, X, S, A, M — leaving L, E, X, S, M (5 letters).
Step 2 — count remaining letters:
5 uncancelled letters remain.
Step 3 — eliminate around FLAMES:
Write F-L-A-M-E-S. Count 5 letters to eliminate, looping around: F(1), L(2), A(3), M(4), E(5) — E is eliminated. Remaining: F, L, A, M, S. Count again from where you stopped: S(1), F(2), L(3), A(4), M(5) — M is eliminated. Continue: S(1), F(2), L(3), A(4) — A is eliminated. Then: S(1), F(2), L(3) — L is eliminated. Finally: S(1), F(2) — F is eliminated. The last letter standing is S — Siblings.
This is exactly what the calculator does automatically, without pencil and paper.
What the letters mean
| Letter | Meaning |
|---|---|
| F | Friends |
| L | Lovers |
| A | Affectionate |
| M | Marriage |
| E | Enemies |
| S | Siblings |
Every result is equally likely from a statistical standpoint — no outcome is harder to reach than any other. The specific letters in each name determine where the elimination cycle lands.
Just for fun
FLAMES is entertainment, not science. It is a nostalgic, shareable game — type two names, screenshot the verdict, and pass it on. Everything runs locally in your browser, so the names you enter are never uploaded.
One quirk: because the result is fully deterministic, swapping the order of the two names (entering “Sam” + “Alex” instead of “Alex” + “Sam”) may produce a different result, since the order affects which shared letters cancel first. Try both orders if you want the full range of possibilities. Neither result is more “true” than the other — it is a game.