Holiday Calendar

National Jude Day

Next celebratedSaturday, September 19, 2026

Jude exists because English translators had two apostles called Judas, and one of them betrayed Jesus; the workaround won by a distance, 2,384 American boys in 2025 against 20 named Judas. September 19 is its day.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATESeptember 19
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

One major registry's archive holds no trace of it.

The earliest surviving trace of National Jude Day is an archived third-party holiday listing captured in August 2022, which already gives the September 19 date. That capture dates the listing rather than the day, so it sets a floor on the day's circulation and not a founding year. No founder, proclamation, registry filing or launch announcement has been located, and on one major holiday registry the day is absent from the Internet Archive's record on both of the slug shapes that registry uses, while an ordinary observance on the same host is archived from 2018.

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INTRO

Bible translators needed a way around the name Judas

National Jude Day belongs to a name that began as a workaround. English translators of the New Testament had two apostles called Judas, and one of them was the man who betrayed Jesus. The other one comes down to us with a different spelling.

Britannica puts it carefully. John 14:22 marks this apostle out as Judas but "not Iscariot," and the habit of writing Jude instead likely started to avoid such confusion.

The workaround won, and it was not close. American parents registered 2,384 boys as Jude in 2025, and 20 as Judas.

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ORIGINS

Jude Day history

INTRODUCTION

The apostle at the root of this name is barely in the record. Britannica places him in the first century and states plainly that after Jesus' Ascension his history is unknown. Legends that first appear in the 4th century put him in Persia alongside Simon, preaching and then martyred.

That pairing stuck. Since the 8th century the Western church has commemorated the two men together on October 28.

CHAPTER 01

A patron for hopeless cases

The devotion that made Jude famous is far younger than the apostle. Britannica dates Roman Catholic veneration of him as patron of impossible or desperate causes to late 18th century France and Germany, and records that it continues. The Armenian Apostolic Church reveres him as the patron saint of Armenia.

CHAPTER 02

The name crosses into English

As an ordinary given name, Jude arrived late and quietly. Behind the Name records only occasional English use from the time of the Protestant Reformation onward, which leaves several centuries in which almost nobody was called it.

Then Thomas Hardy took it. Jude the Obscure appeared in book form in 1895, after a serial run under the title Hearts Insurgent, and the public was shocked by its sexual frankness and by its criticisms of marriage, the university system and the church. Hardy was distressed enough by the reception that he wrote no more fiction and spent the rest of his working life on poetry.

CHAPTER 03

A day with no author

Against all of that, the observance is a blank. Its own documented life begins in 2022, on a holiday site that somebody happened to archive, and nothing earlier has been found.

No source explains why September 19 rather than any other date, and nobody has come forward to claim the idea. What the day does have is the name, and the name reaches back to a first-century apostle whose life after the Ascension went unrecorded.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Jude Day

EVIDENCE

The birth registers know more about Jude than the calendars do.

Jude is counted every year by three national statistics agencies, in England and Wales, in Northern Ireland and in the United States. Those published tables answer far more about the name than the holiday listings that carry this date do.

SPELLING

One spelling covers two different names

Registries record Jude as a boy's name derived from Judas and, separately, as a short form of Judith given to girls. Every count on this page is a count of one exact spelling, not of a family of related names.

TRAJECTORY

The name is near its high point, not reviving

Jude ranked 654th in England and Wales in 1996, the first year of the national name series. By 2024 it had reached 11th, the best position it holds anywhere in that series.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Hardy publishes Jude the Obscure

The novel reached bookshops after a serialised run under a different title, and its reception drove Thomas Hardy out of fiction for good.

The name reaches the US record

Five American boys were registered as Jude, the first year the name cleared the five-birth threshold below which the Social Security Administration suppresses a name.

Hey Jude tops the Hot 100

The Beatles took No. 1 on the chart dated September 28 and held it for nine weeks, their longest run at the top of that chart.

American use nearly doubles

The count of American boys named Jude rose from 83 the previous year to 140, and stayed near that level for the rest of the 1970s.

American use hits its modern low

Only 68 boys were named Jude that year, fewer than in 1960, when the name was still an uncommon choice.

The day's oldest surviving trace

An archived third-party holiday listing captured that August is the earliest evidence anyone was keeping September 19 for the name.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Jude Day

The girls' line never moved at all

Across all thirty years of the England and Wales name series, the number of girls registered as Jude has never left a band between 10 and 24 a year. The boys' line climbed past two thousand in the same window.

The 1969 jump is not a baby boom artifact

Measured as a rate per 100,000 male births, every one of the nine years from 1969 to 1977 sits above every one of the nine years from 1960 to 1968. The average rate rose by a factor of 1.71, and American male births were falling across the same period.

It then took 29 years to get back

American use of the name peaked at 147 boys in 1970 and did not exceed that figure again until 1999. The surge that made Jude a familiar American name is a separate event three decades later.

Older mothers pick it much more often

In the 2025 England and Wales tables Jude ranks 29th among mothers aged under 25 and 12th among mothers aged 30 to 34. The rest of the table sits between those two: 14th among mothers aged 25 to 29, and 13th among those aged 35 and over.

Judah is an American name in a way Jude is not

Judah reaches English directly from the Hebrew Yehudah while Jude arrives by way of Greek and Latin, so the registries and this page count them separately. In 2025 American parents chose Judah 2,050 times; in England and Wales, 100.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Jude Day Around the World

Northern Ireland

the name's strongest showing anywhere, joint ninth on the 2025 boys' list with Arthur, on 101 babies

England and Wales

14th overall in 2025 on 2,153 boys, though the two countries differ: 14th in England and 23rd in Wales

United States

155th in 2025, placing the name outside the American top 150 in the same year it is top fifteen in England and Wales

France

keeps a name day for Jude, but on October 28, the saint's feast, rather than in September

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Jude Day

TRACE

Trace the name back to its Hebrew root

Behind the Name files Jude as a variant of Judas, which comes from the Greek Ioudas, itself the Greek form of Judah, and gives the root as the Hebrew element yada. It is a short read that turns a one-syllable name into a chain of four languages.

READ

Read the novel that carries the name

Thomas Hardy called his last work of fiction Jude the Obscure, and any library or bookshop will have a copy. It is the one thing on this list you will not finish in an afternoon.

PLAY

Play the 1968 single that carried the name

Put Hey Jude on and read Billboard's account of its run at the top while it plays. The chart note explains what the song did in 1968 better than the song does.

SEND

Send a Jude the number behind their name

Pair the year they were born with the rank the name held that year, and put it in a card or a message. It costs one lookup and hands them something about themselves they did not know.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Jude Day?

1 / 8

Why do many English versions of the New Testament say Jude, not Judas?

Answer

No. No legal standing has been found for it, and no US federal document in the Federal Register's searchable record mentions it by name.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

11sources
6primary records
5independently dated
Primary records
Office for National Statistics9 July 2026
Baby names in England and Wales: baby names statistics boys, 2025
The official England and Wales boys' name table drawn from birth registrations, giving Jude's 2025 rank and count, the separate England and Wales figures, and the breakdown by age of mother.
View source
Office for National Statistics9 July 2026
Baby names in England and Wales: from 1996 (1996 to 2025)
The full thirty-year rank and count series for every registered first name, boys and girls listed separately, which is the source of Jude's climb since 1996 and of the flat girls' line beside it.
View source
Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency16 April 2026
Popular First Names in Northern Ireland for Babies Registered in 2025
The agency's own press release, which prints the 2025 Northern Ireland boys' top ten and places Jude joint ninth with Arthur on 101 babies.
View source
United States Social Security Administration2025 data year
Popular Baby Names: national data, 1880 to 2025
Yearly counts of every first name given to at least five American babies of one sex, the source of the 1912 first appearance, the 1969 rise, the 1987 low and the 2025 figures for Jude, Judah and Judas.
View source
Billboard2018
This Week in Billboard Chart History: In 1968, The Beatles Began Their Longest Hot 100 Reign With Hey Jude
The chart's own publisher recording that Hey Jude took No. 1 on the Hot 100 dated September 28, 1968 for the first of nine weeks, the band's longest run at the top of that chart.
View source
Federal Register
Document search for the phrase National Jude Day
The federal document index, which returns no documents for the phrase.
View source
Additional coverage
Encyclopaedia Britannica
St. Jude (Apostle)
Covers the John 14:22 distinction from Judas Iscariot, the hedged account of why English adopted Jude, the 8th century start of the October 28 commemoration, the Eastern feast days, and the late 18th century French and German origin of the desperate-causes devotion.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jude the Obscure
Documents the 1895 book publication after a serial run as Hearts Insurgent, that it was Hardy's last work of fiction, and that its reception drove him to write only poetry afterwards.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Jude (1)
Files the masculine Jude as a variant of Judas with the Hebrew root yada, records occasional English use since the Protestant Reformation, notes the Hey Jules origin of the Beatles title, and lists France's October 28 name day.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Jude (2)
The separate feminine entry under the same spelling, filed as a short form of Judith, which establishes that one registry spelling covers two different names.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Judas
Gives Judas as the Greek Ioudas, itself the Greek form of Judah, which is the route by which Jude reaches English.
View source
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