... Unused before the captivity, Judah was revived again after it, and carried to the highest fame and popularity by the brave Maccabee, who newly founded Judea and restored it, for a time, to freedom and honour... (History of Christian Names, Yonge, 1884)

JUDAH.  [Heb. Yehudhah = "praised," "celebrated," "praise"].
    (1) The fourth son of Jacob, the fourth also of Leah.  He seems to have been named Judah partly because his mother praised God for His goodness to her in connection with her son's birth (Gen. xxix. 35), and partly because she hoped that he might so conduct himself as to merit praise (xlix. 6). 
     (2) A certain Jew whose "sons" with others took the oversight of the workmen in the house of God in the days of Ezra (Ezra iii. 9).  Called in ii. 40 Hodaviah, and in Neh. vii. 43 Hodevah (q.v.).
     (3) A Levite who was induced by Ezra to put away his foreign wife (Ezra x. 23).
     (4) A son of Hassenuah.  In Nehemiah's time he was second in command over the city of Jerusalem (Neh. xi. 9). (The Sunday School Teacher's Bible Manual, Hunter, 1894)