How TV Comedy’s Funniest Characters Got Their Names
Screenwriters on ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘Arrested Development’ and many other comedies share the stories behind instant classics like Frink, Smithers and Bob Loblaw
Is there a better way to change everything about your life than by changing your name? Because while it might not completely erase your circumstances, it definitely allows for a new you, if in name only. So this week, we’re looking at what’s in a new name — for yourself, for your favorite TV characters, for your boat, for your stripper, for your son and for nearly everybody (and thing) in between.
In Season Three ofArrested Development,the show’s writers needed a name forScott Baio’s character, a defense attorney replacing the Bluth family’s deeply incompetent lawyerBarry Zuckerkorn, played byHenry Winkler. The new attorney claimed it wasn’t the first time he’d been brought in to replace Barry and that he could “do anything Barry could do, but skew younger,” an allusion to Baio’s experience replacing Winkler onHappy Days in the late 1970s. Now, the writers’ mandate was to come up with an idiotic name for him.
“How about this?” asked co-executive producerChuck Tatham, writing the words “Bob Loblaw” on a whiteboard.
“Loblaws is a big grocery store chain in my native Canada,” Tatham tells me, explaining that back in the day, he’d heard his father making a joke about “Bob Loblaw” (which, when said quickly, sounds like “blah blah blah”). Tatham repeated the name a couple more times, eliciting a big laugh fromArrested creatorMitchell Hurwitz, and they were off to the races. Fellow writersRichard Day andJim Vallely started piling on, and when the dust settled, they were left with one of television comedy’s most celebrated tongue twisters: “Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog (no habla español).”
Hurwitz dreamed up most of the names onArrested Development, Vallely says. (“Bluth” is a combination of “Blurred-Truth.”) Reading the pilot was confusing since the characters included Michael, George, George Michael, Oscar and Gob (George Oscar Bluth). “Mitch loved the confusion of calling a main character a pop-star name,” he explains. (Needless to say, Michael’s son,George Michael, is decidedlynot like the lead singer ofWham!) Meanwhile,J. Walter Weatherman, aone-armed man employed byGeorge Sr.to stage intricate scenarios to frighten his children into good behavior, received the “J” because writerBarbie Adler felt it added comedic poise. (Adler is also responsible for the name “Gene Parmesan,” which she spotted in the credits for a documentary she saw in high school.) “There was a level of sophistication and respect that we wanted to give him before revealing exactly what his job was,” she tells me. “Although he did it with pride, so maybe he leaned into the ‘J’ as well.”
Oftentimes, says formerSimpsons writerJay Kogen, he borrows friends’ names for characters.Dr. Julius Hibbert, for example, Springfield’s most prominent doctor, who makes no effort to hide his high prices, was named for Kogen’s friendJulia Sweeney (who at the time was married to a man named Steve Hibbert). The character was originally a black woman, “Julia Hibbert,” but when Fox movedThe Simpsons to Thursdays against NBC’s top-ratedThe Cosby Show, the writing staff decided to make Hibbert a male parody ofDr. Cliff Huxtable.
“I usually use my college friends,” agreesSarah Walker, a co-executive producer onSilicon Valley, who recently named a playful character “Erin” after her fun-loving college roommate. “I sort of get in the stage of, ‘Okay, who’s a super-fun girl I know? Erin. Let’s just be lazy and call her Erin,’ and now I know who I’m working with.” AnotherSimpsons character,Professor Frink, is named after Kogen’s friend John Frink. Coincidentally, he explains, years later, John Frink became a writer onTheSimpsons, andlater an executive producer. “[The character is] a scientist who talks like Jerry Lewis,” Kogen notes. “It’s quite a coincidence that I named a character after him, and he became the top producer of the show.”
If he has to come up with a name from scratch, Kogen takes his cue fromCharles Dickens and attempts to make the name sound like the character — a la “Mr. Bumble,” or “Ebenezer Scrooge.” Most of the time he says, he can’t get away with naming a horrible person something like “Mr. Cruelty,” so he tries to pick unique names that match the tone of the character, pointing toThe Simpsons’ “Smithers” and “Mr. Burns” as prime examples. Another would beArcher J. Maggott, a vile character played byTelly Savalas in 1967’sThe Dirty Dozen. (Jack Palanceturned the role down because of Maggott’s racism.) Kogen, who also worked onFrasier, calls Frasier’s brother “Niles” a “perfect” onomatopoeia name. “It’s weird, fancy and kind of British, which is exactly who Niles is.”
Robert Morgan Fisher, a professor of creative writing atAntioch University, calls Dickens a “master” at naming and urges his students to learn from his penchant for never wasting a name. “In creative writing, one of the tools in your writer’s tool box is what we call ‘subliminal connectors,’” he explains, believing a carelessly chosen name to be a “wasted opportunity” to subconsciously layer in meaning, foreshadowing and irony. Much like how a magician uses the power of misdirection, Fisher says good short-story writing includes subtle guidance to “play” the reader so that by the end of the story everything, including the names, makes sense. “If you’re an expert with using names judiciously, long after readers have finished reading something, they’ll circle back and think,Oh yeah,it’s right there in the name.” That said, he cautions his students to tread carefully. “Some people fail epically when they attempt an on-the-nose name,” he warns, pointing to “unobtanium,” the highly valuable mineral found on the moon Pandora inAvatar, his least-favorite movie of all time. “James Cameron must be stopped.”
“I’m from Chicago so I like to name characters after people I know there, like Ned Crowley,” saysChristine Zander, who’s written for3rd Rock From the Sun,Nurse Jackie andSamantha Who? It largely depends on their age, she says. “You can’t really name a 20-year-old ‘Debbie’ because it’s a name from the 1950s. Likewise, older folks can’t have names like ‘Brittany.’ Now that I think about it, though, an 80-year-old woman named ‘Brittany’ would be hilarious.”
“Funny is always going to win for me,” adds journeyman sitcom writerJ.J. Wall. “‘Coastal Eddie’ is a name I’ve used because I think it’s funny and some weathercaster in Long Island used it to describe an actualeddy that had developed off the coast of South Hampton.”
Other genres, like romantic comedies, tend to employ names that fit the whimsical nature of the story’s protagonists. “Our character names are usually fun and lyrical, like Gabriella, because that saysfun andromance,” saysElizabeth Hackett, who’s penned numerous seasonal rom-coms with her writing partner,Hilary Galanoy. “We’re writing something at Hallmark right now, and her name is ‘Josie’ because it’s romantic and lighthearted. We want the guy’s name to have a hard consonant sound, like ‘Jake’ or ‘Max,’ because that’s a hot guy’s name, rather than something soft like ‘Ashley.’ Hard consonant names imply ruggedness and manliness, while the softer, more lyrical names for girls imply romance.”
“Oh God, what a silly thing to be a priority,” counters veteran TV writerRob Ulin, who doesn’t understand why fictional names would ever be determined by their characters. “In real life, people’s characters aren’t determined by their names. They’re not tough guys because their name is ‘Mac’; his name could just as easily be ‘Jeff.’ People named ‘Stuart’ have romances, too!”
Jonathan Green, who’s written forThe Office,The Cleveland Show andThe Mindy Project, tends to agree with Ulin and says naming characters always takes longer than it should, “maybe because it’s easier than actually writing.” Sometimes he and his writing partnerGabe Miller hold off on naming characters until late in the process because they know what a time-suck it can be. “We’ve gotten pretty far into writing a script calling characters things like ‘Main Woman’ or ‘Intense Guy,’” he explains. “Working with a writing partner, naming a character can feel like naming a baby because we each come into it with different preconceptions and biases about certain names based on the people we happen to have known. So someone inevitably says, ‘We can’t name the nerdSherman — Sherman was the coolest guy in my high school!’ There’s a writer I work with who thinks nobody is actually named ‘Carl,’ it’s only on TV — meanwhile, every single one of my dad’s friends is named ‘Carl.’”
“Never, ever, EVER have your main character’s name be involved in the title of the show in any way,” pleadsKevin Biggins, a co-executive producer onFamily Guy. “Like, if your show is namedThe Justice System, you shouldn’t name your main guy Judge Jim Justice. It’s hacky.” I was a writer’s assistant onThe Cleveland Show, when Biggins named one of the main charactersHolt Richter, on a day we had an earthquake. But when the ground isn’t rumbling, he also tries to name characters after his childhood friends because “it’s fun for me, it’s fun for them, it’s fun for everyone.” (He namedQuagmire’s daughter “Courtney” after his sister.) The worst name he’s ever seen was written on a name tag at a golf event: “The name tag read ‘Dudley Underdonk.’” I plan on using it for a character one day. It would be a good name for a HUGE dork.”
Biggins’ favorite character name of all time? Luke Skywalker, because it’s “simply the coolest. Most people learn this name when they’re around 4 years old and it’s mind-blowing: ‘Someone who canwalk onsky? Okay, I’m in!’ I named my son after him.” (Incidentally, one of the many names George Lucasconsidered and rejected for the character was “Luke Starkiller,” because he worried people “would confuse him with someone like Charles Manson.”)
Circling back to Tatham, creator of Bob Loblaw, he also wrote an episode ofHow I Met Your Mother with guest starWill Forte, whose character wanted to brew his own beer. Tatham’s name for him? “Randy Wharmpess” — pronounced “warm piss.” Slow clap.
Some of the best names, Vallely says, are those that reflexively slide off his tongue. His favorite was for a character on theGolden Girls,on which he wrote in the early 1990s. “One day, they were pre-shooting some scenes andBetty White called the writers room and asked for me,” he recalls. “‘Darling,’ she said, ‘I love theSaint Olaf story, but we have the mayor in it and he doesn’t have a name. Could you give me a name for the mayor of Saint Olaf?’ I knew the mayor’s name would have a Swedish sound, so I just blurted out ‘Handentill! Mayor Handentill!’ Betty laughed, which is as good as it gets. It’s not a particularly great joke, but it was fast, which sometimes is very handy.”
Vallely’s favorite names onArrested Development, though, were saved for inanimate objects. For example, they needed a restaurant name for where the Bluths had extravagant Sunday brunches, and he suggested “Skip Church’s Bistro.” Adler added its Jewish counterpart — “Miss Temple’s,” which was said to be “particularly popular on Friday nights.” As for the name of Gob Bluth’s yacht, which Michael told him to sell, writerChuck Martin pitched “Seaward” with the sole purpose of paying off a future scene. That is, Lucille enters just as Michael says to Gob, “Get rid of the Seaward.”
Her response: “I’ll leave when I’m good and ready.”
C. Brian Smith
C. Brian Smith writes hard-hitting gonzo features for MEL, whether it be training with a masturbation coach, receiving psycho corporal treatment from a spank therapist, or embarking on a week-long pleasure cruise with 75 Santa Clauses following their busy season.
