The earliest known ancestor, Valentinus Schöchtert (born c. 1554), lived in the village of Stein (also known by the Hungarian name of Garat, today the village Dacia in Jibert commune near Brașov, Romania) and was a country farmer (land bauer).
As in those times it was very fashionable to use Latin surnames, the family name was Latinized from Schöchter(t) to Soterius (which is also similar to the Greek word soter, saviour).