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What’s in a name?
People born approximately between 1946 and 1964 were nicknamed baby boomers due to the sharp increase in birth rates after World War II. Millennials, now aged 28 to 43, get their name because the oldest members of this generation became adults around the turn of the millennium.
Social analyst and demographer Mark McCrindle isn’t a fan of either nickname.
“A label that lasts for the better part of a century per generation, but defines them at a particular time early in their lives, is not particularly useful,” says McCrindle. “Today, in 2024, this turn of the millennium is more of a footnote in their history rather than a defining feature. So this is the problem of the labels assigned at a given moment.
McCrindle knows a thing or two about generational labels. He is credited with naming the generation that is being born today. Meet Generation Alpha, whose mothers will give birth to the youngest and final members of this group this year.
“Names that are blank slates are the best kind of names, because they’re not already loaded with values,” he says. “It worked with Generation X, with Generation Z. And, I think, more important than what we name a generation is what they call themselves.”
There is no official group responsible for naming generations, but theorists Neil Howe and William Strauss were among the first to name the different generations in their 1991 book, “Generations.” They are given the name Millennials.
“We thought an upbeat name would be nice because of the changing way they were raised. They would be the first to graduate high school in the year 2000, so the name Millennial immediately stuck out to me. came to mind,” Howe told NPR in 2014.
Canadian author Douglas Coupland is credited with coining, or at least popularizing, the term Gen .
Generation Z is believed to get its name because it is two generations after Generation X.
McCrindle and his associates conducted a survey to see what the generation following Generation Z (generally born between 1995 and 2009) should be called. Many believed that millennial children, born between 2010 and 2024, should receive a label associated with technology, such as i-Gen or Digital Gen.
McCrindle disagreed.
“This was the first truly digital generation growing up at a young age and a global generation in uncertain times. We are not going back to the beginning,” he said. “It’s the beginning of a whole new reality and, therefore, I wanted to move away from that idea and just put forward the concept of ‘let’s go with scientific naming,’ which uses the Greek alphabet.”
Following the Greek alphabet model, the generation born between 2025 and 2040 will be known as Gen Beta, followed by Gen Gamma and Delta.
What does McCrindle think of the merit of naming an entire generation?
“Generational analysis has evolved from something that might have been seen by some as pop culture to something that is a serious area in sociology,” he says. “I’m happy that a solid name stuck and something that allows for a little more structure, sequentiality, rigor and borrows from that scientific approach.”
So, even if we cannot predict the future, experts have been able to give it a name.
“We can have the labels, the birth years, and I think that’s an important way of planning for the future and seeing the future,” McCrindle says.
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