Schaefer

At the 2020 census, 39,427 Americans bore the surname Schaefer — 857th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 7,581.

By the numbers

People: 39,427
Rank: 857th
How common: 1 in 7,581
Per 100,000: 13.2

Where the name comes from

Origin German, from an occupational name

From German Schaefer (“shepherd”), an occupational surname; from Middle High German schæfære, from late Old High German scāphare.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Schaefer described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 92.6%
Hispanic or Latino 3.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
Black, not Hispanic 0.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.2%

Notable people called Schaefer

Manfred Schaefer (1943–2023)Australian soccer player
Anne Schaefer (1870–1957)American actress
Henry F. Schaefer (born 1944)American chemist
George Schaefer (1920–1997)American television and theater director

People named Schaefer with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Schaefer

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.