Character Name

Lester

Meaning — From the English place name Leicester, itself from the Roman settlement Ligora Castra meaning "the Roman fort on the Ligore river". The element castra (military camp) reflects the Roman settlement pattern in Britain. The surname Lester, from Leicester, became a given name in the nineteenth century following the English tradition of using aristocratic surnames as first names.·Latin origin·Male·LES-ter

Lester Lester carries the Roman military camp at its root — a name that began as geography and became identity, as the city of Leicester left its name on the English aristocracy and eventually on the general naming pool. There is something reassuringly solid about the name, suitable for a character who is fundamentally embedded in place and community even when chafing against those constraints. It suits protagonists whose struggles are the intensely ordinary ones of men shaped by and resistant to the world that made them.

Best genres for Lester

Literary FictionHistorical FictionAdventureRomance

Famous characters named Lester

Lester Burnham

American Beauty — Alan Ball

The middle-aged suburbanite whose midlife crisis and rebellion against conformity drive Sam Mendes's film, his Latin-rooted name grounding him in the mundane castra of American domesticity.

Variations & nicknames

LesterLesLeicester

Pairs well with

Lester CraneLester MercerLester AshfordLester WhitmoreLester LangfordLester Davenport

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Related names

Chester

Latin · “From the Old English Ceaster, the name given to Roman-walled cities and derived from the Latin castra, meaning "military camp" or "fortress." Chester in Cheshire, England, was the Roman fort city Deva Victrix. The surname Chester derives from someone who came from that city, and it entered use as a given name in 19th-century America, where it was borne by President Chester A. Arthur.”

More Latin names

Verlie

“An American variant of Verla or Verlene, itself possibly a diminutive of Verna (from the Latin vernus meaning "of spring, vernal") or a phonetic variant of Berlie/Birlie from Bertha (Old High German beraht meaning "bright"). The name appears primarily in American Southern naming records from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”

Tatjana

“Tatjana is the Slavic (Russian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian) form of Tatiana, which derives from the Roman family name Tatius — possibly of Sabine origin, borne by the Sabine king Titus Tatius who co-ruled Rome with Romulus. The Russified form Tatyana became one of the most beloved heroines in Russian literature through Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin", a cultured and emotionally genuine woman who gives her name to a celebrated soliloquy.”

Edgardo

“The Italian form of Edgar, from the Old English Eadgar composed of ead meaning "wealth, fortune, prosperity" and gar meaning "spear" — thus "prosperous spear" or "wealthy with the spear". Edgar was a name borne by Anglo-Saxon kings of England and survived the Norman Conquest as a given name in aristocratic circles.”

Assunta

“From the Italian assunta meaning "assumed, taken up", the past participle of assumere, from the Latin ad (to) and sumere (to take). The name refers to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, the Catholic doctrine that Mary was taken bodily into heaven at the end of her life. It is one of the most distinctively Italian Catholic given names, particularly common in Southern Italy and Sicily.”

Patience

“From the Latin patientia meaning "endurance, suffering, forbearance", derived from patiens (the present participle of pati meaning "to suffer, to endure"). The word entered English as both a virtue and a name during the Protestant Reformation, when Puritan communities favored names drawn from abstract virtues as spiritual declarations.”

Andrea

“Andrea is a given name derived from the Greek Andreas, meaning "manly" or "masculine," from the Greek andros (man). While masculine in Italian and German use, it functions as a feminine name in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Slovak, and other European languages. In Slavic cultures it is primarily feminine, a form of the name linked to Saint Andrew the Apostle.”

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