Jude Family History

English (Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk): variant of Judd. The name is also occasionally (but probably rarely) from the Middle English personal name Jude, an Old French vernacular form of the Biblical name Latin Judas (see 2 below).

French: from Jude, a vernacular form of the Hebrew personal name Yehuda ‘Judah’ (of unknown meaning) based on its Latin form Judas. In the Bible, this is the name of Jacob's eldest son.

It was not a popular name among Christians in medieval Europe because of the associations it had with Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver. See also Judah.

French and German: name for a Jew, Old French and Middle High German jude (from Latin Iudaeus, Greek Ioudaios, from Hebrew Yehudi ‘member of the tribe of Judah’).