Random number generator without the Rand function

[jammoca]

In the past I have used the following two formulae at different times to generate random numbers based on people's names in column A (eg: Sanders, Matthew or Jamieson, Chris) .....

=VLOOKUP(MID(A5,FIND(" ",A5)-2,1),Lookups!$B$2:$C$27,2)&VLOOKUP(MID(A5,FIND(" ",A5)-1,1),Lookups!$B$2:$C$27,2)&VLOOKUP(MID(A5,FIND(" ",A5)+1,1),Lookups!$B$2:$C$27,2)&VLOOKUP(MID(A5,FIND(" ",A5)+2,1),Lookups!$B$2:$C$27,2)

=SUM(CODE(RIGHT(A2,1)),CODE(RIGHT(A2,4)),CODE(RIGHT(A2,9)),CODE(A2))/(4*122)

However, there is frequently duplication of the random number generated.

Is there a way to generate random numbers, without using the Rand function, that will rarely give duplicated numbers ?

I don't want to use the Rand function as it keeps changing each time a calculation is made, and I need the randomly generated number to never change once allocated to a person.

 

[Ruddles]

Obviously the more 'samples' you take from the name, the more unique the number will be but if two people have exactly the same name, that will produce exactly the same number.

Do you have any other information about the person such as his date of birth, postal address, postcode, telephone number, etc, elements of which could be included?

Is there a preferred limit to the length of the number?

Does a person's record always stay on the same row (so we could use ROW() in some way) or might it move?

Are you willing to resort to VBA? (I'm thinking about a user-defined function.)

Could you use RAND() to generate a number and then 'fix' it by doing a Paste Special Values? (This could be done automatically by VBA and would be my preferred solution.)