It sounds like German “Stumpf” which is “stump” in English. stumpf (adjective) - tupý, matný - blunt, dull, obtuse der Stumpf (noun) - pahýl, pařez - stub, stump
My point was that the name doesn't sound at all English or Czech. I think wer nailed it (maybe one of these days, I'll pick up German). Quite a few Czechs have German surnames.
German Stumpf is one of a large group of nickname surnames that refer to size; in this case, small size. Duden has two listings for it as a size nickname, "undersized" and "like a tree stump", and one for "weak-minded". Tupý and Pařez are in the Czech Ministry of the Interior list of names (here if you want to see. Be forewarned, it's only in Czech; the male surname list is under přímení ČR), but no Matný or Pahýl. Paholík is listed, though. Is that a diminutive of Pahýl?
A few? Possibly 30 % of Czech surnames are of German origin. But a lot of them are bohemized. Frequencies of related male surnames from the list Ceit wrote about: Stumpf … 25 Štumpf … 137 Štumf … 5 Well, the translations I wrote here are not the only possible. It could be a non-standard diminutive of Pahýl, but I think it is rather a form of “pachole/pacholík” (= pageboy).
"Quite a few" doesn't mean the same as "a few." Perhaps the best translation of "quite a few" is "nemalo." Note, slovnik.cz incorrectly translates this as "celkem malo," emphasizing how few, rather than emphasizing not a few. Still, I didn't realize that the percentage was as high as 30%--I figured more like 15-20%.
All right. 8) I was misled by my dictionary which gives “docela málo” as the translation of “quite a few” :evil:. Yes, “nemálo” seems be good translation - my dictionary confirms it, but only in the direction from Czech to English :roll:. Well, that’s a number I heard somewhere. And I think it fits. I understand that the German origin of some names could be hardly identifiable for non-natives, sometimes even for natives. The name “Šafařík”, for example, sounds quite Czech.
