"The names of the characters in Pepper & Carrot all actually follow the names of plants, herbs, and for the animals that accompany them, vegetable names. So for all the spice names, what inspired me was simply going to do my shopping at the traditional market, there are always grocers' stalls, and then I saw 'coriander', I saw 'saffron', I saw 'pepper', and there it was. There was 'poivre' but in French it sounded too much like 'poivrot'. So I said to myself "We're going to avoid 'poivrot' and 'carrot'", which didn't work very well, which is why I kept the English 'Pepper'."