SIDELINED Health Minister Sussan Ley is no doubt used to having her name misspelled and mispronounced.

Those familiar with the Liberal MP know to add a third “s” in the middle of her first name and that, despite the spelling, it’s pronounced “Susan Lee”, not “Suzanne Lay”.

But this confusion wasn’t always an issue for the senior frontbencher (who, to be fair, has more pressing issues to deal with at the moment anyway).

Ms Ley deliberately added a third “s” to her name when she was approaching her 20s, she revealed in a 2015 interview.

The unusual spelling didn’t draw any influence from the politician’s family or cultural background, but rather, from numerology.

“I read about this numerology theory that if you add the numbers that match the letters in your name you can change your personality,” she told The Australian.

“I worked out that if you added an ‘s’ I would have an incredibly exciting, interesting life and nothing would every be boring. It’s that simple.

“And once I’d added the ‘s’ it was really hard to take it away.”

Sounds bizarre, right? According to Chris Brazel, “Australia’s leading numerology, feng shui and colour expert”, not so.

Ms Brazel has been researching and practising numerology for more than 20 years and has seen people transform their lives and companies transform their fortunes by simply changing their names.

As she explains, numerology is the study of the numerical value in words, linking them to other events.

When it comes to numerology and names, Ms Brazel says the letters in your name and their corresponding numbers must match your birth date. When they don’t match up, it means you carry a “birth emotion”, projected on you by your mother or father at the time of your birth.

According to the theory, these birth emotions can often cause anxiety and stress in people whose names don’t pass the numerology test but, thankfully, according to Ms Brazel, that can be fixed.

“With numerology, the day you’re born tells you everything about you, and your date of birth and name should match,” she says.

“Every letter has an energy vibration, and there’s a really complex formula to use which is pinpoint accurate.”

Ms Brazel says she has worked with people whose first names didn’t match their birth date, but a simple change of a few letters, and a “domino effect” of changes that followed, led to positive changes. She told the story of a nine-year-old named Brooke whose anxiety disappeared when the “e” was dropped from the end of her name, and businesses whose profits exploded after they changed their brand name on her advice, despite their products remaining identical.

She says that Ms Ley’s story of a name change affecting her life didn’t come as a surprise.

“You’ll often need to change your name to what’s happening in your life and, really, your energy totally changes,” she said.

“It might not be just be putting another ‘s’ on the name, but by doing that, this minister — or whoever the person may be — is consciously making a paradigm shift and there is a domino effect of changes that happens after it.”