Diminutive of Judith (Hebrew, 'woman from Judea') or Joseph. Popularized as an independent unisex name in the 20th century.
Jodie is a diminutive and phonetic variant that grew out of the name Judith — from the Hebrew יְהוּדִית (Yehudit), meaning "woman of Judah" or "Jewish woman" — as well as from the shorter form Jo and the popular name Jody, which spread in mid-twentieth-century America as a breezy, friendly given name. The "ie" ending, borrowed from the long tradition of affectionate English diminutives, gives the spelling a softness and informality that has made it the preferred form in British English, while "Jody" remains slightly more common in the American South. Both spellings emerged as independent given names rather than nicknames from the 1940s onward, reflecting a postwar American appetite for short, approachable, uncluttered names.
The name's cultural biography is dominated by one career above all: Jodie Foster, who appeared as a child actor in "Taxi Driver" (1976) at age thirteen in a role of shocking complexity, went on to study at Yale, and became one of Hollywood's most intellectually serious and critically decorated performers — winning Academy Awards for "The Accused" and "The Silence of the Lambs." Her influence on the name is enormous; for many parents of the 1970s through 1990s, Jodie simply means Jodie Foster: fierce, intelligent, uncompromising. British actress Jodie Whittaker reinforced these associations when she became the first woman to play the Doctor in "Doctor Who" (2018), lending the name a new wave of cultural visibility.
Author Jodi Picoult has done the same in literature. Today Jodie feels warmly retro, carrying the easy confidence of a name that never tried too hard and never needed to.