With their lilting rhythms and catchy rhymes, nursery rhymes have delighted successive generations of children since the first publication of Mother Goose in the 1700s—though the original meanings, some of them political, have been lost. (Who knew that ‘Ring Around a Rosy’ referred to the Great Plague of 1665?) The names used very much reflected the small stockpot of those in current use —so a preponderance of Marys, Sallys, Bettys, Jacks, Georgies, Peters, Toms and Tommys, Billys and Willies–but there were a few more original names, and here are a dozen of the best.

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