Schneider is a German surname meaning 'tailor.'
Schneider is a German and Yiddish occupational surname meaning "tailor" — derived from the Middle High German snîden, "to cut," and describing the craftsman who cut and sewed cloth. Alongside Schmidt (smith) and Müller (miller), Schneider ranks among the most common German surnames, a testament to how essential the tailor's trade was to every community across the German-speaking world. In Ashkenazi Jewish communities, Schneider and its variants (Snider, Snyder) became widespread surnames during the period of forced surname adoption in the early nineteenth century, and the name traveled with Jewish emigration to the Americas and beyond.
Notable bearers span disciplines: the German-American comic actor and writer Rob Schneider, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arthur Leonard Schawlow (whose mother was a Schneider), the legendary German cartoonist and musician Helge Schneider, and the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel — tangentially linked through the root. In the realm of music, Florian Schneider was a founding member of Kraftwerk, the German electronic group whose influence on popular music may be unparalleled. The American idiom "the Schneider" in Gin Rummy (to win without the opponent scoring) preserved the name in unexpected popular usage.
As a given name rather than a surname, Schneider is rare and self-consciously bold — a choice that signals exactly the kind of deliberate unconventionality associated with naming a child after a craft or trade. It follows a tradition visible in names like Mason, Tanner, and Fletcher, but operates at a more exotic register, carrying its German and Yiddish heritage openly and without apology.