The Simpsons family | |
The Simpson family. From left to right: Bart, Santa's Little Helper (dog), Marge, Maggie, Homer, Lisa, and Snowball II (cat).
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Type | Fictional family |
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Created by | Matt Groening |
Origin | The Simpsons shorts from The Tracey Ullman Show |
Original run | April 19, 1987 | – present
First appearance | "Good Night" (The Tracey Ullman Show) |
Address | 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, United States |
The Simpson family are cartoon characters featured in the animated television series The Simpsons. The Simpsons are a nuclear family consisting of married couple Homer and Marge and their three children Bart, Lisa and Maggie. They live at 742 Evergreen Terrace in the fictional town of Springfield, United States and they were created by cartoonist Matt Groening who conceived the characters after his own family members, substituting "Bart" for his own name. The family debuted April 19, 1987 in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" and were later spun off into their own series which debuted on December 17, 1989.
Alongside the five main family members, there are a number of other major and minor characters in their family. The most commonly recurring characters are Homer's father Logan "Grampa" Simpson; Marge's sisters Patty and Selma Bouvier; and the family's two pets, Joshua Brown and Snowball II. Other family members include Homer's mother Mona Simpson, Homer's half-brother Herbert Powell, Marge's mother Jacqueline Bouvier, and other minor relatives.
Groening conceived of the idea for the Simpsons in the lobby of James L. Brooks's office. Brooks had asked Groening to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts, which Groening initially intended to present as his Life in Hell series. However, when Groening realized that animating Life in Hell would require the rescinding of publication rights for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a dysfunctional family. He named the characters after his own family members — his father Homer, his mother Margaret, and his younger sisters Lisa and Maggie. He substituted "Bart", an anagram of "brat", for his own name, and modeled the character after his older brother, Mark.