Schneider
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: ‘tailor’, from Middle High German snider, literally ‘cutter’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 32 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ʃnajdə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Schneider is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 3rd most common surname.
- DEGermany≈1 in 303(inferred from the name graph)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 444
- ATAustria≈1 in 903
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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- #684 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 543 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 303 (inferred from the name graph)
≈260,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)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)‘tailor’, from Middle High German snider, literally ‘cutter’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
How Schneider is read
(measured from records)Schneider is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English54%
‘tailor’, from Middle High German snider, literally ‘cutter’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
A surname from German [in turn originating as an occupation] meaning "tailor".
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German25%
from the occupational byname 'tailor'; also 'cutter' or 'mower'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
occupational surname from Schneider 'tailor'.
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
agent noun of schneiden: cutter (a person or device that cuts)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Schneider, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Schneider 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #3 | ≈260,000 est. | ≈1 in 303 | listed | Schneider | 295 |
| US United States | #257 | 101,290 | 1 in 3.3K | 101K | Schneider | 543 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | #18 | ≈86,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Schneider | 3 |
| FR France | — | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | 2.4K | — | 11 |
| CH Switzerland | #5 | 18,936 | 1 in 444 | 19K | Schneider | 149 |
| AT Austria | #19 | ≈9,800 est. | ≈1 in 903 | — | Schneider | 147 |
| LU Luxembourg | — | ≈650 est. | ≈1 in 967 | 1.7K | — | 41 |
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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es). 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)Schneider 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.
Schneider means tailor, common since the 15th century. Only in the district of Under Rhine, Baden, 1809.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
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)- Magda Schneiderb. 1909DEGerman actress (1909–1996)
- Fred Schneiderb. 1951USAmerican musician
- Maria Schneiderb. 1952FRFrench actress (1952-2011)
- Johann Schneider-Ammannb. 1952CHbusinessman, politician and member of the Swiss Federal Council (2010-2018)
- John Schneiderb. 1960USAmerican actor and singer
- Elisabeth Baume-Schneiderb. 1963CHSwiss politician
- Rob Schneiderb. 1963USAmerican actor, comedian, and screenwriter
- Dan Schneiderb. 1966USAmerican TV producer and actor (born 1966)
- Paul Schneiderb. 1976USAmerican film actor
- Olivier Schneiderb. 1982FRpresident of the French Federation of Users of Bicycle (FUB)
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)62 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 101K | #312 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 101K | #272 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 97K | #320 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 19K | #6 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 2.4K | — |
| LU Luxembourg | Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es) | — | 1.7K | #19 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 8
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Schneider mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘tailor’, from Middle High German snider, literally ‘cutter’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Schneider?
- In the etymology graph, Snijder is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Schneider?
- A machine transcription gives /ʃnajdə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Schneider have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 264 thousand people named Schneider in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled schneider.
- How common is the name Schneider?
- In the United States, the national register counted 101,290 people named Schneider in 2010, about 1 in 3.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Schneider compared with other names?
- In Germany, Schneider is the 3rd most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Schneider?
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/schneiderThe 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, “Schneider” — the 3rd most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.