Shriver is a surname.
The surname may derive from the obsolescent common noun shriver, "a person who shrives". The English verb to shrive is an obsolete word referring to the act of confession (transitive or intransitive, confessor or penitent).[1]
However, the basic meaning of the Indo-European root that is the linguistic ancestor of shrive is the idea of writing, and it lives on in many other modern words, including English scribe and scrivener and German schreiben [to write]. Therefore, the surname Shriver may possibly have come from another occupation connected in some way with writing, such as clerk or secretary, and it could have arisen on the continent in an earlier form of spelling and pronunciation and been naturalised into English.
A number of notable people have the surname Shriver:
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