2011-01-24

American Generations

Sometimes I wake up at 2 am, and can't get back to sleep because of some silly question my brain has posed. This week was "What is Generation X really versus the Baby Boomers... and should they really be X or should we be Y or U." I guess it came from all the press coverage that people born from 1946 til 1964 were Baby Boomers and after that were Generation X. Now the name "Generation X" seems to have been chosen out of the air but is it appropriate and what years would it cover.

Now first off, I think Generation X etc is silly because we should start counting back to when people came over the Bering Straights N thousands of years ago. But since this Generation thing is "American European based" I will focus on that.

Actually what I will do is say every generation lasts 18 years, and that baby boomers were generation W, then generation X, then Y. Backing up we get a list of the alphabet like this.

Generation:  A 1550 -> 1567
Generation:  B 1568 -> 1585
Generation:  C 1586 -> 1603
Generation:  D 1604 -> 1621
Generation:  E 1622 -> 1639
Generation:  F 1640 -> 1657
Generation:  G 1658 -> 1675
Generation:  H 1676 -> 1693
Generation:  I 1694 -> 1711
Generation:  J 1712 -> 1729
Generation:  K 1730 -> 1747
Generation:  L 1748 -> 1765
Generation:  M 1766 -> 1783
Generation:  N 1784 -> 1801
Generation:  O 1802 -> 1819
Generation:  P 1820 -> 1837
Generation:  Q 1838 -> 1855
Generation:  R 1856 -> 1873
Generation:  S 1874 -> 1891
Generation:  T 1892 -> 1909
Generation:  U 1910 -> 1927
Generation:  V 1928 -> 1945
Generation:  W 1946 -> 1963
Generation:  X 1964 -> 1981
Generation:  Y 1982 -> 1999
Generation:  Z 2000 -> 2017

This does work because the "first" generations of children being born in European colonies (that lasted) in North America are known to have been after 1560. Now the question is what to call the generation after 2017? AA?

Anyway.. I think I can get a good nights sleep finally.

2 comments:

Máirín said...

i think this is off! gen X is baby boomers. 70's and 80's babies are more gen Y aren't they?

Stephen Smoogen said...

Kind of. Originally Generation X was the generation of children born after the War, but this got superceded by the "Boomer" name. By the 1970's, the term was used for people born of the Boomer Children.

My major issue was I forgot to put in links on the term.

I would guess X would have been moved along over time but once Y got labeled for the kids born in the late 80's/90's and Millenials as the ones being born now.. we old folk got stuck with it.