Hi. I'm the newbie around here. Just a few weeks ago I got turned into a brony. It's all pretty fresh to me. My experience with the whole MLP phenomenon is in seeing all currently released episodes of MLP:FiM. And that's about it. Looking around, there seem to be some characters that are well defined (appearance, personality, popularity, cutie mark, etc) just like the Mane Six that appear in every episode, but I've never seen some of them at all and others only in the background, but they have never been named or given any character development in the series. To name a few I'm referring to: Doctor Whooves Derpy Lyra Octavia Where does your knowledge of these characters come from, as they have not been given any character development in the series, and not even a speaking role in the series as far as I can recall? I've never even seen Doctor Whooves in there, either. Are they "leftovers" from the original MLP series? I do know that Derpy was introduced as a background character that just sort of "happened" and has gained a fan base, but what about the others?
It's almost completely down to fanon. The fans give a personality to the background characters, with almost no correlation to what goes on in the show. It's picking up on the tiniest detail, such as Berry Punch drinking, well, punch, and Derpy's eye error.
Lyra and Bon Bon show up together often in the show That's all that's canon to it It's the fandom that has brought their relation to life (or existence for that manner) The fandom just likes to look overly deep into things, simple actions define entire personalities and really help bring the world to life.
Where exactly the names come from I can't tell you, but the best source for background pony names is the list of ponies at the MLP:FiM Wiki. Their character definitions mostly come from watching them and what they do in the episodes plus coarse ideas about the origins of their respective cutie marks. It's sometimes also fan fiction which adds to their fanon characterisation, for example Ditzy being a mailmare. Sometimes this leads to funny coincidences, for example when we were told that one of the animators named Carrot Top by that name, too. Sometimes our theories, including the name in Cheerilee's case, end up in canon.
