Is Judith's name day December 7 or December 10?

It depends which calendar you keep. Denmark marks Judith on December 10, and this observance uses December 7, which appears on none of the six traditional name days recorded for the name.

What does the name Judith mean?

Behind the Name and the Catholic canon's own introduction to the Book of Judith gloss it identically: a Jewish woman. The Hebrew behind it is Yehudit, the feminine form of yehudi.

Is the Book of Judith history?

No. The introduction the Catholic canon carries calls it historical fiction, written around 100 B.C., and points to details such as Nebuchadnezzar ruling Assyria from a Nineveh destroyed in 612 B.C.

National Judith Day

Next celebratedMonday, December 7, 2026

In France, Judith is having the best year of its recorded life; in America it has gone from 25,214 girls in 1943 to 344. December 7 gives the name a day that no European calendar had claimed.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEDecember 7

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYNames

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A name day that nobody signed.

No founder, establishing act or first observance is documented for National Judith Day. The US Federal Register carries no document naming it, and the UK Parliament's Hansard records no mention across any of its document types. The day circulates on holiday-listing sites without an author.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday

INTRO

Eleven straight years of gains in one national register

National Judith Day arrives at a strange moment for the name it marks. In France, Judith is having the best year of its recorded life, ranking 80th nationally in 2025, its highest position in 126 years of records.

America's Judith moment is long past. The Social Security Administration's files recorded 25,214 girls named Judith in 1943. In 2025 they recorded 344.

The December 7 date is its own puzzle. Judith keeps six name days on the European calendar, spread across four countries, and December 7 is not one of them.

ORIGINS

Judith Day history

INTRODUCTION

The name means exactly what it says. Yehudit, in Hebrew, is the feminine of yehudi, a person of the tribe of Judah, so Judith is literally a Jewish woman.

There is exactly one Judith in the Hebrew Bible, and she is not one. The name occurs once in one verse, at Genesis 26:34, where Esau at forty takes to wife Judith, daughter of Beeri the Hittite.

CHAPTER 01

The book that made the name

The Judith that painters kept returning to comes from somewhere else entirely. In the Book of Judith a widow lifts Holofernes's own sword off the bedpost, takes him by the hair, and strikes his neck twice.

The introduction the Catholic canon carries is blunt about the book's history. It calls the work historical fiction, written around 100 B.C., with Nebuchadnezzar ruling Assyria from a Nineveh already destroyed in 612 B.C.

The rabbis left it out of their scriptures and the Reformation followed them. The Council of Trent included it in 1546, making Judith one of seven deuterocanonical books.

CHAPTER 02

How English caught up

England was late to the name. Behind the Name records that Judith did not become common in English until after the Protestant Reformation, despite a handful of examples during the Middle Ages.

The Continent had been using it for centuries by then. Several European royals carried it, among them the 9th-century Judith of Bavaria.

CHAPTER 03

The day with no paper trail

National Judith Day has nothing like that documentation behind it. No founder and no establishing act are on record for the day. The Federal Register holds no document naming it.

What December 7 does carry in the United States is a statute for an entirely different day. 36 U.S.C. 129 makes it National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, and nothing published connects that designation to the name.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Judith Day Matters

ENDURANCE

146 years inside the top 1,000, and 2013 nearly ended it.

Judith has ranked inside the US top 1,000 girls' names in all 146 years the Social Security Administration has published, one of fewer than a hundred names that can say so. Its closest call came in 2013, when it finished 994th, six places from the edge.

ART

Donatello made Judith a Florentine subject

The Uffizi credits the popularity of the Judith theme in Florence mainly to Donatello's bronze, erected in the Piazza della Signoria in 1494. The statue now stands in the Hall of Lilies of the Palazzo Vecchio.

SPACEFLIGHT

A Judith flew Discovery's first mission

Judith A. Resnik joined the January 1978 intake, which NASA describes as its first group of new astronauts since 1968 and the first to include women and minority candidates. She logged 144 hours and 57 minutes in space on Discovery's maiden flight in 1984, then died with the Challenger crew on January 28, 1986.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Judith Day by the Numbers

454,714: American girls named Judith, 1880-2025
48%: US Judiths born in the 1940s
#4: Judith's best US rank, in 1940
5: American girls named Judith in 1880
~600: French girls named Judith in 2025

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Judith Day

The oldest copy of her book is broken pottery

The oldest surviving text of the Book of Judith is verses 15:1 to 15:7 inscribed on a third-century potsherd. No ancient Hebrew or Aramaic manuscript of it has ever been found.

Galileo had to help the painter collect her fee

Artemisia Gentileschi finished her Judith around 1620 and then could not get paid. The Uffizi records that only her friend Galileo Galilei's intervention prised the agreed sum out of Grand Duke Cosimo II, long overdue, after the picture had already been denied a privileged place in the Gallery.

American boys were named Judith too

SSA's card-application files put Judith inside the boys' top 1,000 for nine straight years, from 1938 through 1946, peaking at 91 boys in 1941. For eight of those years it was simultaneously a top-ten girls' name.

Holofernes wears the painter's own face

In Cristofano Allori's version, painted between 1610 and 1612 and now in the Pitti Palace, the severed head is a self-portrait. The woman holding it was modelled on his lover, Mazzafirra.

A Hanukkah cheese custom hangs on her

Moses Isserles's gloss on the Shulchan Arukh reports that some say cheese should be eaten at Hanukkah, because of a miracle worked through milk that Yehudit fed the enemy. The book as the Catholic canon has it packs her a skin of wine, a jug of oil, roasted grain, fig cakes and bread, and no dairy at all.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Judith Day Around the World

Austria

keeps two name days for Judith, on March 13 and March 25

Denmark

marks Judith on December 10, and shortens the name to Judit or Ditte

France

keeps the name day on May 5, the only date it uses

Spain

has two dates, September 7 and December 30, and uses the form Judit

Israel

Hebrew keeps the original form, Yehudit, and Yiddish the pet form Yutke

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Judith Day

Ask a Judith which short form she uses

The name comes with a shelf of short forms, among them Jude, Judi and Judie. Ask which one she actually answers to, and who picked the long version.

LOOK

Look the name up in a national register

France's statistics office publishes every first name given since 1900, and the American files reach back to 1880. Both are free to download and searchable in seconds at the INSEE names file.

READ

Read the widow's story for yourself

It runs sixteen short chapters and the famous scene lands in chapter 13. The full text is online and takes about half an hour.

FIND

Find her in a museum collection

Search a gallery's online catalogue for Judith and you will usually get several centuries of pictures back. The Uffizi holds one of the fiercest, hung in the room it shares with Caravaggio.

CHECK

Check which date your own calendar keeps

Four countries keep six different dates for Judith, and a card sent on the wrong one lands as a surprise. Look up the dates each country marks before you write it.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Judith Day?

1 / 8

Which book of the Bible holds the only woman named Judith in the Hebrew scriptures?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing found, so it does not make December 7 a day off.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

17sources

13primary records

7independently dated

Primary records

Institut national de la statistique et des etudes economiques2026-07-16

Fichier des prenoms

Every first name given in France from 1900 to 2025, with counts and ranks