The Hebrew form of Judith, meaning woman of Judea or Jewish woman.
Yehudit (יְהוּדִית) is the Hebrew original from which the English name Judith derives, and it is one of the oldest names in active use in the Western world, connecting contemporary bearers to a continuous chain of usage stretching back more than two and a half millennia. The name is the feminine form of Yehuda (Judah), meaning "praised" or "he who is praised," itself derived from the Hebrew root "yadah," to give thanks or to praise. To be Yehudit is to carry a name whose very meaning is an act of gratitude.
The name's most celebrated bearer in the Jewish tradition is Yehudit of the Book of Judith — a deuterocanonical text preserved in the Catholic and Orthodox biblical canons — whose story of courage and cunning in the face of military invasion made her one of the great heroines of ancient literature. She appears in countless works of Western art, most famously Caravaggio's "Judith Beheading Holofernes" and Artemisia Gentileschi's powerful rendering of the same scene. In Jewish tradition, the story of Yehudit is also associated with Hanukkah, adding a seasonal resonance to the name.
Yehudit was also the name of one of Esau's wives in the Book of Genesis. In modern Israel, Yehudit remains a genuinely used name rather than an archaism, borne by figures including the beloved Israeli singer Yehudit Ravitz. Diaspora Jewish communities have tended toward the anglicized Judith, but a growing number of families are returning to the original Hebrew form as a way of honoring linguistic roots. Yehudit carries the full weight of its tradition — biblical, artistic, and musical — while remaining a living name rather than a historical artifact.