Lester

42,692 people in the United States were counted with the surname Lester in the 2020 census, making it the 789th most common in the country. That is about one person in 7,001.

By the numbers

People: 42,692
Rank: 789th
How common: 1 in 7,001
Per 100,000: 14.3

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

As an English surname, from the placename Leicester.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Lester described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 73.3%
Black, not Hispanic 18.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.9%
Hispanic or Latino 3.0%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Lester

Richard Lester (born 1932)American film director
Mark Lester (born 1958)British actor
Phil Lester (born 1987)English YouTube vlogger and radio personality
Seán Lester (1888–1959)Irish diplomat
Tom Lester (1938–2020)American actor and evangelist
Adrian Lester (born 1968)British actor, director, and writer
Jon Lester (born 1984)American professional baseball pitcher
Mark L. Lester (born 1946)American film director

People named Lester with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Lester

Also a first name

Lester has been given to 132,047 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1918. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.