The name Lester can be traced back to Leicester, the name of a city in the UK. The city name may have originally been a combination of the words Ligore (an early name for the River Soar) and the Latin word castra, meaning "camp."

Lester was among the top 100 baby names for boys for almost fifty years (from 1886 to 1931), but hasn't made the top 1,000 at all recently (since 2000).

One notable man named Lester was Lester Bowles Pearson (1897-1972), who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 and served as the Prime Minister of Canada during the 1960s. He is considered one of the most influential Canadians of the twentieth century.