This is a rare and unusual surname. Its true origins are open to some doubt, but we can say with absolute certainty that they are French and probably 17th century Huguenot. The early surviving recordings in the French Huguenot church of the city of London known as La Artillery, Threadneedle Street, refer to La Pierre, with for instance that of Antoine La Pierre and his wife the former Charlotte Pechot, on July 9th 1608. Some twenty years later at the same church we have the recording of Ester Lesper, who was christened on April 10th 1631 in the reign of King Chareles 1st of Engalnd (1625 - 1649). She was the daughter of Pierre and Charlotte Lesper, and thereafter Lesper seems to have been the spelling, with as a later example Phillipe Lesper, who may well have been the grandson of Pierre, at the same church on April 20th 1684. The French dictionary of surnames however gives no such spelling. The only similar ones being that of either Pierre as both a personal name and a locational name (Le Pierre), and Spire, also a locational name, and deriving from the Norse word "spir," and meaning a steep hill.

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