Gen X. Gen Y*. Gen Z.
Before that, there were labels for Gens “Baby Boomer”, “Silent”, “G.I”, and “Lost”.
Before then? Who knows. Apparently we in the Western world didn’t publicise gen labels for folks born before 1883. (See Wiki for more info about these.)
In any case, it seems the folks coming up with generation labels weren’t very forward-thinking when they came up with “Generation X”.
So now, here we are, sending Gen-Z kids to elementary school and now we’ve used up all the letters of the alphabet.
I propose we use double-letters now for kids born after 2023. like AA, AB, AC, etc. That’ll last for 676 “Generations” (averaging 18 years, not the classical 30-year definition of “generation”), or the next 12,168 years. That should cover our bases for awhile. And after that we’ll just Y2K** it.
* Gen Y are Millennials, who’ve quietly used up the second-to-last Gen letter. The Press were very stealthy about assigning the label to them and named them “Millennial” instead, probably because they made the assumption that the Millennials wanted to be unique and didn’t want to hurt their feelings. Silly Press.
** Y2K was a very exciting and tumultuous time when software consultants ran free and wild amongst the Plains of Fear and Potential Disruption. Ah the glory days.