Some names impose themselves naturally. Simple words, carried by a history longer than that of the company that adopts them.
Stûv is one of those names. Before becoming the signature of a stove manufacturer, it was a word. Short, precise, local. A word that tells the story of fire.
In central Walloon, spoken around Namur, the word stûv meant “wood-burning stove”.
It comes from the Latin term stufa, which referred to a furnace or a heated room. This Latin word was passed on to several European languages:
All these forms carry the same idea: a source of warmth, a room made habitable by heat.
Walloon is not a foreign language. It is a regional language, derived from French and Latin, rooted in a territory and passed down from generation to generation.
In this local speech, stûv has remained true to its original meaning: simply, a stove.
This Walloon word has long existed alongside another, more familiar word: poêle.
Both words evoke the same object, but they did not follow the same history.
One through cooking.
The other through the warmth of an enclosed room.
This meeting tells a simple story: fire has always accompanied life, and every language names it with the words it has at hand.
In 1983, when Gérard Pitance, the founder, created his first wood-burning stove, he looked for a name that felt right, short, and self-evident.
The word stûv imposed itself.
It expresses the essential, without embellishment. It carries warmth, function, and local grounding.
It sounds real, like a word that has already lived.
This first stove became the Stûv 60.
The name settled.
The brand emerged around the product.
It was only in 2009 that the company officially became Stûv S.A.
The word that once named a product became the name of the entire company.
A logical decision: Stûv represents our identity, our values, and our way of thinking about heat.
Stûv is a word from here, born in a Walloon dialect.
But it resonates elsewhere.
Because it is simple.
Because it fits into a visual clarity: S-T-U-V, four consecutive letters of the Latin alphabet.
A natural continuity. A line. An intention.
This discreet universality reflects what we aim to create: objects rooted in their territory, yet designed to live everywhere.
Today, Stûv is present in Europe, Canada, the United States and Australia.
And still, its name carries the same strength: a short word linking a local story to a broader vision.
Choosing this word for our first product, and later for the entire company, was not a marketing gesture.
It was a choice of coherence.
An old word, a local root, a universal reach.
A word that expresses what we do: designing fire with precision, simplicity and respect for its history.