Schreiber
A German occupational surname meaning “writer” or “clerk.”
The #2,269 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 19,256 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Schreiber comes from German schreiben, “to write,” with the agent suffix -er, so the literal sense is “writer” or “one who writes.” In medieval usage it could refer to a scribe, clerk, or secretary rather than an author in the modern sense. The name is therefore an occupational surname, formed from a person’s job or office.
History
Historical surname dictionaries regularly gloss Schreiber as a German equivalent of “scrivener” or “clerk,” and the name appears in records of German-speaking families from the late medieval period onward. It spread widely in German-speaking lands and later appears in Britain and North America through migration. Some sources also note cognate forms and translations in other languages, reflecting the same occupational naming pattern.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The surname matches a very common medieval naming pattern: many European languages have their own version of “writer” as a family name, including English Scrivener and Dutch Schrijver.
From the historical record
“Schomberg. SCHREIBER. German. A writer or clerk. The ancestor of the English family SCO 306 SCO”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom