An excerpt from the Simpson's archive (http://www.snpp.com/other/papers/db.paper.html):

Allusions are another large part of art and they are a huge aspect of "The Simpsons" (...) The core family, the Simpsons, has references and allusions in their names as well. Matt Groening, the creator of "The Simpsons", had parents named Homer and Marge and siblings named Lisa and Maggie. The origin of Bart is that it is an anagram for the word brat. The surname of Simpson was derived since it translates into "son of a simpleton". There is a possibility that, due to many similarities, Homer may have been named after the Homer Simpson in "Day of the Locust", but this has not been confirmed.