Yehuda

Yehuda comes from Hebrew. It rests on the root y-d-h, meaning to praise or to give thanks. In Genesis, Leah names her fourth son Yehuda and says that this time she will praise the Lord. From that son grew the tribe of Judah, and the southern kingdom took the same name. The word Jew traces back to it.

The name belonged to scholars and singers. Yehuda HaLevi, a poet and physician in twelfth-century Spain, wrote Hebrew hymns that congregations still sing. Centuries later Eliezer Ben-Yehuda pushed Hebrew back into daily speech, and his own surname holds the old word for praise.

In a Polish class register Yehuda stands apart from the Jakubs and Jans, though all three reach back to the same Scripture. The meaning stays close to its first use: praise, and thanksgiving.