Mother Goose

Like most of the rhymes themselves, the precise origin of the term Mother Goose is hard to pin down. One likely story, though is that a Boston bookseller published a collection of nursery rhymes in 1719, call it Songs for the Nursery or Mother Gooses Melodies for Children. The kicker on this story is that he named it after his mother-in-law, a Mrs. Goose, because her unmelodic singing drove him to distraction.