Eastlakes takes its name from the extensive lake system on its southeast and its location in the Eastern Suburbs.

Part of the suburb is on the former site of the Rosebery Racecourse, which was redeveloped in the 1960s into a residential and commercial area.

In the early 1970s a large public meeting was held during which the Parkes Development were accused of duping unit dwellers into believing that nearby open land was to remain a park, only to find that the land was privately owned by the developer.

It requested that the NSW Builders Labourers Federation place a green ban on the site, which it did with the result that the area remains as parkland.

[5] The Eastlakes area is mainly working class, with the north-east of the suburb, adjacent to the shopping centre, being made up of medium-density affordable flats with large immigrant populations mainly from Turkey and Bangladesh[citation needed], surrounded by three large public housing estates; Rosebery Apartments (two 10 story concrete maisonette blocks), Eastlakes Apartments (two 10 storey redbrick apartment blocks and 2 storey flat complex) and Longworth Court (5 Story and 3 story flat blocks adjacent to a Radburn complex), home to four high-rise towers and a large unit complex on the border with Daceyville.

According to 2021 census, the most common ancestries in Eastlakes were English 12.5%, Australian 12.2%, Chinese 9.8%, Greek 8.9% and Bangladeshi 6.0%.

Other languages spoken at home included Bengali 8.1%, Greek 6.8%, Indonesian 4.1%, Turkish 3.7% and Spanish 3.2%.