Lester
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Person from Leicester, Leicestershire; place-name meaning ‘Roman town of the Ligore tribe’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/lɛstɚ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lester is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 3.5K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 4.1K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 471 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)
47,571 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Person from Leicester, Leicestershire; place-name meaning ‘Roman town of the Ligore tribe’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Lester, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lester counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #533 | 47,571 | 1 in 7K | 47K | Lester | 471 |
| PH Philippines | #498 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | — | Lester | 137 |
| GB United Kingdom | #585 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | Lester | 218 |
| IT Italy | #975 | ≈8,700 est. | ≈1 in 7.2K | — | Lester | 29 |
| CA Canada | #613 | ≈7,500 est. | ≈1 in 5K | 1 | Lester | 153 |
| SG Singapore | #300 | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Lester | 98 |
| NZ New Zealand | #386 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | 11 | Lester | 84 |
| GY Guyana | — | 297 | 1 in 2.5K | 297 | — | 9 |
47,571 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Lester is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from Lestre, Manche, France; first attested William de Lestra 1084 GeldR (Somerset). Also a variant of LISTER; first attested Andrew le lestere 1327 Pinchbeck (Suffolk)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Old English; from Leicester, Roman site or fort
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from the city of Leicester. The place name is recorded in the roth century as Ligora cester, representing a British name of obscure origin + the Old English term czster ‘Roman fort’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, habitational name from Leicester, named in Old English from the tribal name Ligore (itself adapted from a British river name) + Old English ceaster ‘Roman fort or walled city’ (Latin castra ‘legionary camp’).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
English Leicester Meaning Roman
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Lester Germerb. 1896USAmerican physicist (1896–1971)
- Lester B. Pearsonb. 1897CA14th Prime Minister of Canada, from 1963 to 1968 (1897–1972)
- Les Clarkb. 1907USnot in their usual nameAmerican animator (1907–1979)
- Benny Carterb. 1907USnot in their usual nameAmerican jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader (1907-2003)
- Lester Youngb. 1909USAmerican jazz saxophonist (1909–1959)
- Lester del Reyb. 1915USAmerican science fiction author (1915–1993)
- Les Paulb. 1915USnot in their usual nameAmerican jazz guitarist, country guitarist, songwriter and inventor (1915–2009)
- Lou Adlerb. 1933USnot in their usual nameAmerican record producer, manager and director
- Lester Birdb. 1938USPrime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda (1938-2021)
- Johnny Nashb. 1940USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer (1940–2020)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 83 sources across 43 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 47K | #936 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 297 | #314 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 229 | #936 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 103 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1971 | 11 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1985 | 6 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2023 | 5 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 1 | #2,319 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Lester mean, and where does it come from?
- Person from Leicester, Leicestershire; place-name meaning ‘Roman town of the Ligore tribe’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Lester a male or female name?
- Lester is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How do you pronounce Lester?
- A machine transcription gives /lɛstɚ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Lester have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 48 thousand people named Lester, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lester.
- Where is Lester most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lester is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 2.5 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Lester?
- In the United States, the national register counted 47,571 people named Lester in 2020, about 1 in 7.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Lester compared with other names?
- In the United States, Lester is the 533rd most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lester?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lesterThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Lester” — the 533rd most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.