Schâfer
surname · Latin script
Schâfer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Middx; Gloucs. see Skeates .
- USUnited States1 in 14K(measured from records)
- ARArgentina1 in 71K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 3.4K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 107 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.4K (inferred from the name graph)
24,543 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Schafer in US United States, AR Argentina.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Main GB Location (1881): Middx; Gloucs. see Skeates . • Current frequencies: GB 338, Ireland 1 • GB frequency 1881: 166 • Main GB location 1881: Middx German: anglicized spelling of German Schäfer, see Schaefer .
Cited for this meaning 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Schâfer counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 24,543 | 1 in 14K | 25K | Schafer | 107 |
| BR Brazil | 4,106 | 1 in 52K | 4.1K | — | 2 |
| CH Switzerland | 2,440 | 1 in 3.4K | 2.4K | — | 9 |
| AR Argentina | 638 | 1 in 71K | 638 | Schafer | 50 |
| NL Netherlands | 520 | 1 in 33K | 520 | — | 2 |
| SE Sweden | 317 | 1 in 32K | 317 | — | 1 |
| DK Denmark | 287 | 1 in 20K | 287 | — | — |
| FI Finland | 203 | 1 in 27K | 203 | — | 3 |
24,543 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Schâfer mean, and where does it come from?
- Main GB Location (1881): Middx; Gloucs. see Skeates . Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary.
- In which country does Schâfer have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 25 thousand people named Schâfer, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled schafer.
- Where is Schâfer most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Schâfer is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 3.4 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Schâfer?
- In the United States, the national register counted 24,543 people named Schâfer in 2010, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Schâfer?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sch%C3%A2ferThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Schâfer”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.