Matt Groening has had some second thoughts about naming the characters in his hit TV show, "The Simpsons," after real members of his family, especially his dad, who gets called Homer Simpson by his friends.
"If I had it to do over again, I probably wouldn't have called this character Homer," Groening told a Playboy interviewer."It was just an inside joke for my family that has backfired in a very big way. That's why I had to name my son Homer, to make up for it."
Like Bart Simpson, Groening's mother is named Marge and he has sisters named Lisa and Maggie.
"But the Simpsons aren't really my family," he says. "They're only a fraction of my family's wild behavior. . . . There are elements of my family in the cartoon, but I also have a brother and a sister I have not humiliated by naming cartoon characters after them."