When Simpsons creator Matt Groening's mother, Margaret (or Marge, as her friends knew her), died last month at the age of 94, a wonderful obituary was printed in a Portland, Oregon newspaper, which was cause for some fan excitement about all the Simpsons name echoes in the Groening family. While the real Marge's hair may not have been blue, her life story is filled with familiar names.

As many fans of the show already know, creator Matt Groening named the characters on the show after members of his own family, with the exception of Bart, though he has said in interviews that the real inspiration for Bart was actually his older brother Mark. Matt's younger siblings did get animated namesakes, however—Lisa and Maggie—and his father, who died in 1996, was named Homer. He also had an older sister named Patty (who died earlier this year), who seems to be the direct inspiration for the Patty and Selma characters — as one Redditor comments, he used to know Margaret and Patty Groening, who would come into a pharmacy where he worked, and Patty "was pleasant, but reeked of cigarette smoke and had crazy, wiry hair."

The most noteworthy part of the obituary, however, may be the fact that its writer fails to mention The Simpsons or the fame of Marge's son at all, as if that would be tacky.

The Simpsons began life in 1987 as a series of shorts created for interludes on The Tracey Ullman Show. Groening famously sketched out the concept for the show sitting in the lobby of director James L. Brooks' office after deciding he didn't want to risk losing the rights to his Life in Hell characters by doing an animated series about them. The Simpsons remains the longest-running prime-time animated series in the country.

[Reddit, obit via user Yarr]
[Willamette Week]
[The Oregonian]