Goldilocks [M16th] The name Goldilocks is first found in the mid 16th century as a nickname for someone with yellow hair. The earliest printed source currently known of what is an old and widespread folk tale which calls the heroine Goldilocks is dated 1906, but she was obviously known by the name earlier because we find allusions such as ‘Howard was the great, big huge bear, and Charlie was the middle sized bear, and I was the little, small wee bear, and baby was to be the goldilocks’ (1875). Goldilocks’s rejection of Daddy Bear’s stuff as too great in one way, and Mummy Bear’s as too small, cold, or other quality, but Baby Bear’s as ‘just right’ has led to the use of Goldilocks to describe an ideal situation since the mid 20th century, particularly in terms such as Goldilocks planet or zone [1980s] to describe planets around other suns that orbit in a zone ‘just right’ for life.