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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Scottish, English, and German : nickname for a calm man, from Middle English, Middle High German stille ‘calm’, ‘still’. The German name may also have denoted a (deaf) mute, from the same word in the sense ‘silent’.
  • English : topographic name for someone who lived by a fish trap in a river, from Middle English still, stell ‘fish trap’.
  • German : habitational name from a place so named, in Alsace, near Strasbourg.

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