Jude is an example of a name whose image was turned on its head primarily by one appealing celebrity. So take a bow, Jude Law: You--in collaboration with the Lennon-McCartney song "Hey Jude"--have erased Jude's old connections to the traitorous Judas Iscariot and Thomas Hardy's tragic Jude the Obscure, and inspired a legion of new babies named Jude--over two thousand of them last year.

Saint Jude was the apostle who interceded for people with problems and became the patron saint of lost causes.

Kelsey Grammer has a son named Jude Gordon. Jude is occasionally used for girls (as in Martha Stewart's granddaughter)--but more often as a shortened form of Judith/Judy.