Shavers
An English surname most likely from a nickname or occupational label connected with shaving or a barber’s trade.
The #9,054 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 85,549 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Shavers is most plausibly built on the English verb "to shave," with the ending -ers suggesting a person associated with the action or trade. In surname use, it likely began as a nickname for a barber, someone who shaved others, or perhaps for a man known by some shaving-related habit or appearance. The historical record for this exact form is limited, so the precise path is not certain.
History
The surname is relatively uncommon today and appears in English-speaking records as one of several names derived from everyday trades or nicknames. Similar names were often fixed as hereditary surnames in the late medieval and early modern periods, when occupational bynames became family names.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Because -er surnames often came from jobs, Shavers belongs to the broad family of names that once identified a person by what they did for a living.
From the historical record
“It is just possible, however, that she kept an appren- tice, although such things are still to be seen, I believe, as women-shavers. But the one chief sobriquet for the medical craft, and the one which, excepting our * Barbers,' has made the deepest indenture upon our nomenclature, was that of ' Leech ' — zaas, I…”
— English Surnames: their sources and significations