“Parks and Recreation” showrunner Mike Schur takes particular pleasure in coming up with wacky names.

“I have this belief that most people you meet in life aren’t named Bill Smith,” Schur says. “From early on I thought, ‘Part of what’s going to make (the city of Pawnee) feel real is if people have weird names.'”

Over the years some of the silliest and strangest “Parks” names weren’t even heard on the show.

“There’s a whole family, the Lerpiss family,” Schur explains with delight. “You’ve never heard the name Lerpiss on the show, but there’s probably ten or twelve characters who have had the last name. It doesn’t play into any episode and there’s no plot that relates to it.

“If you look up Lerpiss on IMDb, we wrote character descriptions for them and how they’re related to each other. A...