According to Groening, ``Homer originated with my goal to both amuse my real father, and just annoy him a little bit. My father was an athletic, creative, intelligent filmmaker and writer, and the only thing he had in common with Homer was a love of donuts.'' Although Groening has stated in several interviews that Homer was named after his father, he also claimed in several 1990 interviews that a character in the 1939 Nathanael West novel The Day of the Locust was the inspiration for naming Homer.
Groening
Homer