Roshei Tevot (initial letters)

Take the first letter of each word and read the initials as a word or name. The forty-two letter name is exactly this: the initials of the forty-two words of the prayer Ana BeKhoach. Worked: in Esther 5:4 the initials of יבוא המלך והמן היום spell יהוה — the Tetragrammaton hidden in a book that never names God.

Roshei tevot is the half of notarikon that compresses rather than expands, and it is the most productive of all the letter-methods because a text's initials are objective: anyone can read them off without choosing a vocabulary. The tradition uses it for names (every Hebrew acronym, from Rambam to Tanakh), for acrostics (Psalm 119, Lamentations 1–4), and for the hidden names it finds in Esther and elsewhere.