Sorry, you just repeat a common misconception which os just put ionto scholarly terms in Wikipedia! We actualy see the term “Yehudi” being applied before Yehudah was born! We find Esav, the son of Yitzchak, when he marries a daughter of a Canaanintte, to try and make up for the fact that wife was aCanaaniteschanges her name to YEHUDIT- the feminine form of YEHUDAH to indicate that she follows the religion of Avraham and Yitzchak! See, YEHUDI means “One who praises G-d”- and from this incident it is obvious that people referred to Avraham, Yitzchak and their followers by this name- long before Yehudah was ever born!

We also see in the book of Esther that it refers to Mordechai, the uncle of Esther, from the tribe of Benyamin as “Ish Yehudi”- “a Jewish man”; showing Yehudi to be a generic term for any person from Bnei Yisrael! Additionally, Yehudah’s territory bordered that of Binyamin, which remained faithful and thus was always alongside them- and was sent into exile with them. Moreover, the tribe of Levi (made up Levi’im and Hokanim) had no land of their own and lived amongst the other tribes- thus at the time of the exile there were THREE identifiable tribes- Yehudah, Benyamin and Levi. Only the other ten tribes dissapeared when exiled by the Assyrians. (For the mathematicians amongst you, obviously 10+3 does nto equal twelve LOL How do we reconcile this? Therre were nine tribes that were exiled- but due to the double inheritance of Yosef as the portion of the first born, the tribe of Yosef is split into two when discussed- the tribes of Ephraim and Menessah)