The Simpsons are a nuclear family consisting of married couple Homer and Marge and their three children, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie.

[1] 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,[2] and modeled the character after his older brother, Mark.

[3][4] The five family members were given simple designs so that their facial emotions could easily be changed with almost no effort[5] and so that they would be recognizable in silhouette.

[2] The Simpson family made their debut on April 19, 1987, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night".

[8] Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, and Yeardley Smith all began voicing their characters on The Tracey Ullman Show.

Yeardley Smith had initially been asked to audition for the role of Bart, but casting director Bonita Pietila believed her voice was too high.

Cartwright became more interested in the role of Bart who she found more fascinating because he was described as "devious, underachieving, school-hating, irreverent, [and] clever.

Homer, the father, works as a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, a position at odds with his careless, buffoonish personality.

They have three children: Bart, a ten-year-old troublemaker; Lisa, an eight-year-old child prodigy; and Maggie, a toddler who rarely speaks, but communicates by sucking on a pacifier.

He embodies several American working class stereotypes: he is crude, overweight, incompetent, clumsy, thoughtless and a borderline alcoholic.

[18] He has occasionally displayed flashes of great intellect and fitness whenever the situation calls for it, and an integrity reflecting his own values, including a fierce devotion to and protectiveness of his family.

Marjorie Jacqueline "Marge" Simpson (née Bouvier, voiced by Julie Kavner) is the well-meaning and extremely patient wife of Homer and mother of Bart, Lisa and Maggie.

[22] For her performance in The Simpsons Movie, Kavner received a nomination for "Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature" at the 2007 Annie Awards, but lost to Ian Holm in Ratatouille.

[26] In 2008, CityNews published an article entitled "Top 10 Greatest TV Moms of All Time", and placed Marge in eighth spot.

[27] Bartholomew Jojo "Bart" Simpson (voiced by Nancy Cartwright) is the eldest child and only son in the family, at age 10.

[29][30] Bart's catchphrase "Eat My Shorts" was an ad-lib by Cartwright in one of the original table readings, harking back to an incident when she was at college.

[33] Bart is rebellious and frequently escapes without punishment, which led some parents' groups and conservative spokespeople to believe he provided a poor role model for children.

"[35] Lisa Marie Simpson (voiced by Yeardley Smith) is the eldest daughter and middle child of the family, at 8 years old.

[39] She is musically proficient on the saxophone; besides the occasional riff during the opening credit sequence Carole King's Jazzman and Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street have been prominently placed during episodes.

Lisa's well-intended but ill-fated struggles to be a voice of reason and a force of good in her family and city struck a chord with the Japanese.

She was quite prominent in the Tracey Ullman Show shorts, often being featured alongside Bart and Lisa but has since become the least seen and heard of the five main Simpsons.

[50] Mona J. Simpson (née Olsen, voiced by Glenn Close) is Homer's long-lost mother, Marge's mother-in-law, and Abe's estranged first wife.

Her first major appearance was in "Mother Simpson" where she reveals that she was forced to abandon her family after being caught up in the hippie movement and participated in various acts of activism.

[54] Patricia Maleficent "Patty" and Selma Bouvier (both voiced by Julie Kavner[77]) are Marge's older twin sisters.

Selma is the elder by two minutes, possesses a strong desire for family, and has been married and divorced six times, and also sought to have a child on numerous occasions despite her age.

Her sister, Patty, is one of the show's few openly gay (or bisexual, as she once commented "there go the last remaining threads of my heterosexuality") recurring characters[78] although for the most part she has avoided relationships.

Like all Bouvier women, she is voiced by Kavner, and has large, unique hair, resembling Marge's, only a light gray color due to her old age.

According to Marge in "Bart the Lover" after Clancy got out of the Navy, he had trouble with his cursing that nearly cost him a job as a baby photographer, but Jacqueline was able to curtail that by having him donate money to the swear jar.

In the episode "Puffless", it is revealed that he died of lung cancer,[86] which provoked Patty and Selma to abstain from smoking cigarettes.