Judith
- Pronunciation
- [Ju-dith]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Praised
- Origin
- Hebrew
About the Name Judith
Judith comes from the Hebrew Yehudit, meaning "praised" or "woman of Judea" — a name that connects both to the Hebrew root yadah (to praise) and to the tribal name Judah. In the Hebrew Bible, Judith is the heroine of the deuterocanonical Book of Judith, celebrated for her courage in delivering her people from an invading army. That combination of feminine strength, national identity, and religious devotion gave the name centuries of steady use across Jewish, Christian, and later secular naming traditions.
The name first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1934 and reached its national peak of #4 in 1940, accumulating more than 406,000 recorded top-1000 births across its long chart life. Judith Wright (1915–2000) was an Australian poet, environmentalist, and Aboriginal-rights advocate whose lyric meditations on the New England tableland and the Queensland rainforests are central to twentieth-century Australian literature. The name has remained in the SSA top-1000 continuously since its debut, ranking #883 in 2022, #905 in 2023, and #832 in 2024 — an unusually long unbroken chart run for a name of its era.
Judith today occupies a rare position: a name old enough to feel genuinely classical, yet never so dominant that it feels like a single generation's property. Its two-syllable rhythm — JU-dith — is clean and confident. Recorded variants include Jodie, Jody, Judeana, Judeena, Judi, Judie, Judit, Juditha, and Judy.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Judith
US Popularity History (1934–2025)
Annual US births named Judith by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1943 with 25,214 girls named Judith (girl rank #7 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #790 for girls (344 US births). That's 783 places below its 1943 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Judith Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Judith the strongest states are Kansas, Oregon, Kentucky.
Strongest girls-name states
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Illinois | #932 | 43 |
| 2 | Pennsylvania | #911 | 42 |
| 3 | Maryland | #906 | 23 |
| 4 | North Carolina | #890 | 52 |
| 5 | Ohio | #883 | 54 |
| 6 | Georgia | #867 | 56 |
| 7 | Michigan | #839 | 47 |
| 8 | Virginia | #838 | 26 |
| 9 | New York | #832 | 157 |
| 10 | Indiana | #829 | 62 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Judith in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jodie | Praised | Female | Hebrew |
| Jody | Feminine Of Nickname For Joseph And Jude. | Female | English |
| Judeana | From Judea. | Female | Hebrew |
| Judeena | From Judea. | Female | Hebrew |
| Judi | From Judea. | Female | Hebrew |
| Judie | Praised: From Judea. | Female | Hebrew |
| Judit | Praised | Female | Hebrew |
| Juditha | From Judea. | Female | Hebrew |
| Judy | Praised From Judea. | Female | Hebrew |
Famous People Named Judith
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Judith.
- Judith Wright was the second Australian to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Looking for names like Judith?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Judith to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Judith against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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