--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao" <josimo70@...> wrote:
> Does anybody know what is the etymology of Czech surname Coufal or
Koufal?
>
>
> Joao SL
Koufal must be a mispronounced version of Coufal (as /-co-/ in most WE
languages reads as [ko], whereas in Czech, it is [tsoufal])
Well, at first sight, we might analyse it as follows:
1. co-ufal
1. OCz ufal (3rd sg. past tense of ufati "to hope") = "he hoped"
"co" = "what, the one that, the one who", thus coufal might mean "the
one who hoped", or the ending may mean the agent of an action, i.e.
"the hoper" (but why would there be the "co-"?)
2. Cz coufal < German < Cz zoufal (i.e. Zoufal misread, mispron. by a
German speaker), where zoufal < zu:fati (z- plus, again, 3rd sg. past
tense of ufati "to hope", i.e. "to despair", "to be desperate") = "he
despaired", or, perhaps, "the despairer", "the desperate one", due to
the ending...
3. Coufal << German Zaufen "to recede", "reverse", "shrink", "back" >
Cz couvat (id.), and, again, the -l ending -> "the recessist", "the
reverser", "the shrinker". A question arises here, why it's not couval
(which is used in ordinary speech). I have met several Czech bearers
of this surname, and they all had -f-. It might have simply got
frozen, or it is a secondary change due to German reading, again. Such
cases were common, as Czech lands were, for hunderds of years, a part
of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
I hope some of the above will be helpful to you.
Petusek