Assigning a value to a word?

[Skitzo]

How would I make a word like "dog" have a value of 1, "cat" have a value of 2, and "fish" have a value of 3, so that when I sort them the order is: Dog, Cat, Fish, instead of alphabetical order Cat, Dog, Fish.
I'm doing this with many more values so this is just an example.
I'm not sure if i used the correct terminology but you should be able to help somewhat, Thanks in advance.

Skitzo-

 

[The Todal]

What are the criteria for determining the value to assign to the word? How many different words are there? Are the number of words static or fluid?

 

[QuietRiot]

would you want anoter column with numbers?

1 dog
2 cat

then sort all by number column

 

[Skitzo]

I could use numbers but id rather do a formula.
I assign the values manually.
There are 9 different words total.
I don't know what you mean by static or fluid.
Id like to do something similar to what a TI-83 calculator does when you enter a letter, then enter a value and that letter gains that value for use in algebra.
But instead of algebra I want to be able to sort the data by that value I assigned to it.