Schaeffer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: an anglicization of German Schafer, literally ‘shepherd’; or an invented Jewish name based on it
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 18 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈʃɛfɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Schaeffer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 21K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 21K
- AXÅland Islands≈1 in 5.6K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 397 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.6K (inferred from the name graph)
16,024 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Åland Islands, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)an anglicization of German Schafer, literally ‘shepherd’; or an invented Jewish name based on it.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Schaeffer 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 | — | 16,024 | 1 in 21K | 16K | Schaeffer | 397 |
| FR France | — | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 632 | — | 6 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 21K | 77 | Schaeffer | 70 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 104K | — | Schaeffer | 12 |
| BR Brazil | — | 2,178 | 1 in 97K | 2.2K | — | 4 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Schaeffer | 6 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈19 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Schaeffer | 2 |
| AX Åland Islands | #796 | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | — | Schaeffer | 1 |
16,024 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Schaeffer is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Croatian, francuski moderni skladatelj, akustičar i elektronski inženjer; 1948. sa svojom ekipom mladih skladatelja predstavio tzv. konkretnu glazbu, koja koristi elektronski preparirane i manipulirane zvukove iz svakodnevna života i prirode kao ravnopravni zvučni materijal tradicionalnim instrumentima ( Simfonija za osamljena čovjeka , 1950)
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Claude F. A. Schaefferb. 1898FRFrench archaeologist (1898–1982)
- Chester Schaefferb. 1902USfilm editor (1902-1992)
- Pierre Schaefferb. 1910FRFrench composer and musicologist (1910-1995)
- Francis Schaefferb. 1912USAmerican theologian and writer (1912-1984)
- Bogusław Schaefferb. 1929PLPolish composer (1929–2019)
- Jonathan Schaefferb. 1957CACanadian computer scientist
- Eric Schaefferb. 1962USactor, film director, screenwriter
- Rebecca Schaefferb. 1967USactress (1967-1989)
- Wendy Schaefferb. 1974AUAustralian equestrian
- Jac Schaefferb. 1978USAmerican filmmaker (born 1978)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)32 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 16K | #2,272 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 15K | #2,156 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,391 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.2K | #4,507 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 1.1K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 914 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 780 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 745 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 735 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 734 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 725 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 632 | — |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Schaeffer mean, and where does it come from?
- an anglicization of German Schafer, literally ‘shepherd’; or an invented Jewish name based on it. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Schaeffer?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈʃɛfɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Schaeffer have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 16 thousand people named Schaeffer, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled schaeffer.
- How common is the name Schaeffer?
- In the United States, the national register counted 16,024 people named Schaeffer in 2010, about 1 in 21 thousand residents.
- How common is Schaeffer compared with other names?
- In Åland Islands, Schaeffer is the 796th most common surname of 1,503 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Schaeffer?
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/schaefferThe 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, “Schaeffer” — the 796th most common surname in Åland Islands. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.